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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THE NEW BIRTH 



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A CHAPTER ON MIND-CURE 



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Z. P. MERCER 



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JUftf 171887 



CHICAGO 
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

175 Dearborn Street 
1887 



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COPYRIGHT 1887, 
By L. P. MERCER. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

The General Doctrine, - - 7 

Man the Microcosm, ... 10 

The Child op To-Day, - - 11 

The First Men, - - - - 12 

The Fall of Man, - - - 15 

Hereditary Tendencies, - - 19 

How Shall the Lord Regenerate ? - 20 

Regeneration Progressive, - - - 25 

The Means of Regeneration, - - 32 

The Work of the Holy Spirit, - 35 

Man's Co-operation, 51 

The Function of Worship, - - 56 

The Stages of Regeneration, 66 

1. Stage of Preparation, - 71 
Hindrances, - - - - 72 
Germs of Heayenly Life, - - 78 

2. Stage of Reformation, - - 89 
Repentance, .... 90 
Conversion, ----- 93 

3. Stage of Regeneration, - - 97 
Temptations, - ... 99 

A Chapter on Mind-Cure, - - - 107 

The Doctrine, - - - - 111 

Doctrine Applied, - - - 114 



"Divine Order is heaven as existing with man; this man 
has perverted in himself by a life contrary to the laws of 
order f which are Divine truths; he is brought back into that 
order by the Lord, out of pure mercy, by means of the laws 
of order; and in proportion to the degree of his restoration to 
order he has heaven within him; and he who has heaven 
within him goes to heaven after death. Hence it is evident 
that the Divine mercy of the Lord is pure mercy, but not 
'immediate mercy*" — Swedenborg; Heaven and Hell, 



The New Birth. 



''God created man in His oion image" 
"Ye must he horn again." 

By the Word of the Lord were the heavens 
made and all the host of them by the breath of 
His mouth. He produced the spiritual world in 
order from himself ; and through the spiritual 
world He produced the natural world. He 
had an end in their creation. That end is man, 
and a heaven of men, created and re-created in- 
to angelic images and likenesses of Himself. 
He desires such, not 4:o please Himself, but to 
bless them ; to give the things that are in Him 
to be in them as their own. He desired a spir- 
itual world and a natural world as a means of 
producing such human images and likenesses of 
the divine. 

This end of God in the creation of the uni- 
verse was present in all the causes and effects 
produced. Thus, He produced the spiritual 



6 THE NEW BIRTH. 

world, an image and likeness of the infinite 
things in himself which he would put into the 
making of man's spiritual nature. Then through 
the spiritual world He produced the natural 
World, an image and likeness of corresponding 
things which He would put into man's earthly- 
nature. Then, lastly, He produced man, who 
had been first in His purpose, and put into him 
all the divine thought of the twofold universe. 
He made him to have in himself a little spiritual 
world and a little natural world. 

Man is a microcosm, a little universe. God, 
who put His wisdom into the production of the 
spiritual and natural worlds, embodied both in 
man, so that he might receive all of those prin- 
ciples of love and wisdom of which the spiritual 
and natural worlds are the effect, behold the 
principles of his own life reflected in the things 
of both worlds, and use both in the love and 
service of God. Thus man, in the image and 
likeness of God, is an epitome of the two worlds 
plus the faculty of receiving and using life from 
God in rationality and freedom. In his faculties 
are gathered up all the principles and causes of 



THE NEW BIRTH, 7 

the universe, together with the crowning faculty 
of self-determination, which is the highest image 
of the divine. He is a little universe, with the 
faculty of determining all the principles and 
uses of the universe gathered up in himself, 
freely as of himself, in the love and service 
returned to God. Man alone, therefore, is the 
image and likeness of God; and the universe is 
the image and likeness of man. But this, in- 
volved in the creation of man, was not brought 
forth complete at once. As the child is born 
helpless, and at first develops only animal in- 
stincts, so were the first men only possibilities 
and potential forms, capable of being informed, 
reformed, and regenerated into angelic men. 



THE GENERAL DOCTRINE. 

The first men were animal and natural before 
they were spiritual and heavenly. Gatching at 
this truth from analogy, current theories of evo- 
lution carrv it to unwarranted conclusions. 
With an eye directed to only one side of the 



8 THE NEW BIRTH. 

universe, the natural and earthly ; with revela- 
tion ruled out, and only the deductions of reason 
from natural science allowed, the theory of 
evolution constructs the story of man's slow 
progress from the animal and savage state to the 
exalted prudence and refined selfishness of nine- 
teenth-century civilization and science. 

It says man begins down as the savage, with 
all animal appetites and instincts, and in his 
struggle with nature and his fellow-man learns 
a certain measure of prudence; and, whether 
under the pressure of a nameless force, or the 
discipline of an inscrutable Providence, or by 
the influence of circumstances, rises into the 
range of moral emotion and thought, developing 
new faculties within for the appreciation of 
spiritual truths and the conception of the God- 
like. There is, in this view, no fall of man 
from celestial perfection entailing consequences 
upon the race. There is no evil except undevel- 
oped good. There is no redemption except what 
the race has produced through its typical men, 
or pre-eminently the Man of men; there is no 
regeneration, except the progressive unfolding 



THE NEW BIRTH. 9 

of natural powers and the natural development 
of men out of low conditions into higher. The 
Ancient Scriptures give us no true account of a 
primeval state of man ; the fables of Genesis are 
but the struggles of simple men after a statement 
of the truth. The human race was never wiser 
than at present; anfl, instead of being God's 
Word for the instruction and regeneration of 
men, the Sacred Scriptures are subject to our 
judgment and selection; for the inspiration of 
modern thought is superior to that in the Scrip- 
tures, and able to sit in judgment upon it. 

How barren of wisdom, and what a sad pro- 
fanation of things divine and holy, all this seems 
under the light of the revelations of the New 
Church opening to us the mysteries in the 
Sacred Scriptures! For from the internal sense 
of the Word, from the facts concerning the spir- 
itual world, and from the principles of a true 
psychology contained in the doctrines of the 
New Church, we learn a far different story of 
man's genesis and development and of the his- 
tory of the race and of the providence of a real 
God in redemption and regeneration. God in- 



10 THE NEW BIRTH. 

volves in the creation of man what He would 
evolve in his regeneration. 

MAN THE MICROCOSM. 

As in the universe there proceeds from God 
(1) the spiritual sun, (2) the three heavens, (3) 
the world of spirits, and the natural world: 

So in the formation of man there is given (1) an 
inmost dwelling-place of God, (2) the internal 
man in its distinct planes corresponding to the 
three heavens, (3) the external man corresponding 
to the world of spirits, and the body correspond- 
ing with this world. 

Thus in man's organic form are involved 
all the possibilities and planes of angelic life, 
resting upon the possibilities and planes of 
natural life. This organic form, involving 
all the planes of human life and perception 
from the highest heaven to the lowest animal 
plane of the senses, is essential to man. It 
was given in the first men, as it is given in 
every infant since born into the world. In each 
of the planes in man's organic form there is 
implanted an organic faculty of the will capable 
of receiving the divine love and an organic 



THE NEW BIRTH. 11 

faculty of understanding capable of receiving 
the divine truth. * 

But these planes are only forms capable of be- 
ing infilled and developed in use. The will and 
understanding are only faculties capable of be- 
ing informed and brought into activity. It was 
so in the beginning; it is so in the birth of every 
child. God presides and operates in the pro- 
creation and regeneration of men as in their first 
creation and formation. 

THE CHILD OF TO-DAY. 

Potentially it has all the heavenly and all the 
earthly possibilities of humanity in its organic 
spiritual form, as it has all the functions of a 
mature body in its undeveloped physical form. 

* These are called "organic faculties/' "because the will 
is not any spiritual abstract principle, but is a subject sub- 
stantiated and formed for the reception of love from the 
Lord," and so of the understanding. They "actually exist 
although they lie concealed from the sight, being within in 
the substances which constitute the cortex of the brain." 
" The changes of their state are affections, the variations of 
their form are thoughts, the existence and permanence of 
the latter and the former is memory, and their reproduction 
is recollection ; both taken together are the human mind." — 
Swedenborg's Apoc. Exp. 



12 . THE NEW BIRTH. 

But actually these forms are all vacant and closed 
faculties, except the simplest unconscious and 
involuntary motions and animal instincts. The 
organic faculties of the external mind have to 
be opened by means of the senses, and by im- 
pressions and affections thus implanted the suc- 
cessive planes of natural will and understanding 
are infilled and by use developed. While this 
is being done the Lord, unseen and unfelt, 
operates upon the planes of the internal man, to 
fill them with heavenly affections and impres- 
sions, to be afterward brought forth and used as 
man's own. Without this work of the Lord 
through heaven man could never have a spiritual 
wish or thought. But while He is developing 
into actualities the faculties of the natural man 
He is also planting in the interior degrees of the 
soul the seeds of "a new birth," a spiritual and 
celestial man to be subsequently brought forth. 

SO WITH THE FIRST MEN. 

"In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth." They had all the heavenly and 
earthly forms, or planes necessary to the devel- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 13 

opment of human life in the world and for 
heaven, "First that which was natural and 
afterward that which was spiritual." Even the 
earth of the natural mind was "without form 
and void" till the spirit of God moved upon 
the foce of the deep. They were born into a 
natural animal life, with good, innocent appe- 
tites and instincts. They used the senses, and 
nature like a great mother instructed them; 
light from God through the spiritual world 
flowed in and enlightened them. And God 
divided between the light and the darkness. And 
this was the first daj^, the state of the natural man. 

They were without evil. They had an up- 
ward tendency to heaven. They received into the 
affections of the will the impulses of the divine 
love, that "life which is the light of men," and 
from that light all the thoughts of the under- 
standing from the impressions of the senses were 
true. Thus the first men came into the realiza- 
tion of good, innocent and true, though only 
natural and sensual, manhood, ready to be re- 
generated. 

In the internal sense by the days of creation 



14 THE NEW BIRTH 

in Genesis are revealed the processes by which 
the Lord informed, vivified and developed the 
various degrees of the spiritual mind, and the 
man-animal of the first state of creation be- 
came the Man of that state concerning which it 
is said: "And God created man in His own 
image, and God saw all that he had made, and 
behold it was very good." The first chapter of 
Genesis understood in its spiritual sense shows 
us how God thus developed by regeneration the 
faculties and possibilities which He had put into 
man by creation. The second chapter in its 
spiritual sense portrays the celestial state of the 
Most Ancient Church from the first regenerated 
men. The revelations from the spiritual world 
made at this day supplement and illustrate this 
spiritual history. They were simple, open, 
affectionate, and true. They lived in communi- 
cation with both worlds, and enjoyed internal 
revelation from God. The Word "in whom 
was life and whose life was the light of men " 
flowed into the opened will and understanding 
of their higher and lower natures as a stream 
from a fountain ; both their heavenly and earth- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 15 

ly impulses and thoughts were good and true 
from God. They saw and acknowledged that 
all life and light, both spiritual and natural, are 
from the Lord alone ; and that man has nothing 
and is nothing of himself. They taught their 
children this, and they grew up naturally and 
their minds unfolded simply and easily under 
the spirit of the Lord in innocence and wisdom. 
This was primeval innocence and wisdom; the 
Golden Age. 

THE FALL OF MAN 

The "Fall" is what every ambitious scheme 
of natural evolution denies. The Scriptures 
assert the fact, portray the conflicts of redemp- 
tion which result, and take the tone of their 
instructions from this fact as affecting all men. 
History confirms it. All our experience testifies 
to it. 

First a gradual and progressive development 
from man-animal to man-angel. 

Then a period, perhaps long, of celestial inno- 
cence and wisdom. 

Then a decline reaching through ages, with 
crises and new beginnings, culminating at the 



16 THE NEW BIRTH. 

incarnation and arrested by the works of redemp- 
tion. 

This is the teaching of Scripture. Even the 
natural progress of the race has not been contin- 
uous. It has moved in cycles. It has been at 
the best a progress in natural science and civili- 
zation. At the same time there has been every- 
where spiritual declension in great cycles; or 
declining dispensations, from celestial to spiri- 
tual, from spiritual to natural, and from natural 
to sensual apprehension of truth and possibilities 
of life. 

What was this "fall of man," and what its 
effects? It was a yielding to the testimony of 
the senses as against the internal life and light, 
and an exaltation of human science and the per- 
suasions of sense above the light of revelation. 
Man appears to live of himself. The universe 
appears to evolve itself. Facts appear fixed 
and things seem sure. Man's thought and wis- 
dom appear to be derived from natural facts by 
the processes of natural enlightenment and 
reason. His life in time and space seems his 
greatest good; and self interest his most natural 



THE NEW BIRTH. 17 

motive. The men of the Most Ancient Church 
perceived the fallacy of these appearances. They 
perceived that all their natural knowledge and 
life were from God. The "tree of life" was in 
the midst, the "tree of knowledge" in the cir- 
cumference, of their intellectual garden. Grad- 
ually they yielded to the appearance; exalted 
their own science and reason; the tree of knowl- 
edge became central in their regard, and the 
sensual affections and persuasions grew more 
assertive; they called wisdom their own, and 
this closed up their celestial and spiritual minds, 
turned their impulses into evil, their thoughts 
into falsities. Evil and falsity perverted also 
the forms of the external mind, and became 
fixed in the spiritual organism; and these per- 
verted forms were transmitted as hereditary 
tendencies and proclivities. 

Two things resulted. First, that regener- 
ation from being easy became difficult, because 
men were born with a hereditary bent and 
tendency to evil and hell; and, second, that 
God must present His revelation outwardly 
as instruction through the senses, capable of 



18 THE NEW BIBTH. 

forming a structure of divine truth in the 
natural understanding, receptive of His life 
and its light. The history of revelation from 
this time on, beginning with the Church called 
Noah, is the history of the adaptation of divine 
truth in lower and lower forms adequate to man's 
natural and sensuous apprehension and capable 
of influencing his motives. The internal sense 
of the divine history of the successive ages 
and dispensations shows the Lord coming to 
man in forms of revelation capable of arresting 
his tendency to all evil, and thus to hell, 
and providing for his regeneration. The so- 
called primitive and savage races are not 
primitive at all, but the last natural and sensual 
remnants of fallen churches. The so-called 
ethnic religions, instead of being the struggle 
of primitive man to conceive God, are the rays 
of a setting sun of primitive revelation struggling 
to maintain themselves in surrounding darkness; 
while the line of Hebrew Scripture is God's 
descent in His spoken Word and in preparation 
for His Incarnation for the works of redemption, 
and for the under-reaching of man's fall, the 



THE NEW BIRTH. 19 

opening of a new career of spiritual development 
and the restoring of the " desolations of many 
generations." This story of man's fall is the 
only thing that can enable us to see our true 
position, and prepare us for regeneration by the 
grace of God. 

HEREDITARY TENDENCIES TO EVIL. 

The child is born of human parents, and its 
spiritual organism is qualified by that of the 
parents. As at the beginning, God creates. 
Through the organic spiritual form of the human 
father the Lord creates the heaven and earth, 
the internal and external degrees of the infant 
soul or spirit; and through the mother gives it 
body and birth. Just as in the body, the law of 
heredity operates in the transmission of consti- 
tutional disorders and tendencies to disease; £0 
in the spirit, acquired forms of evil in parents 
yield only perverted and disordered spiritual 
forms which constitute, not sin, but tendencies 
and proclivities to evil. The child, therefore, 
realizes its life in the disordered appetites and 
perceptions of sense; and all its latent natural 



20 THE NEW BIRTH. 

faculties and powers inherit a constitutional 
bent to evils which have been accumulating 
along a long line of tainted ancestry. 

HOW SHALL THE LORD REGENERATE? 

By His Word and Spirit, with man's consent and 
cooperation. Hereditary evil is at first quiescent, 
and preparation is made before it becomes 
active. The Lord flows into the soul with a 
sphere of innocence and peace. The celestial 
angels attend. The senses become active, and 
all impressions and affections which tend to open 
the organical vessels of the sensual mind are 
guarded and preserved in innocent delight, and 
at the same time celestial remains are implanted 
in the internal mind. Through parents and 
teachers instruction is given, the love of know- 
ing is developed and satisfied, the love of under- 
standing is called forth, and reason exercised. 
And thus the external natural mind is born into 
actuality and the exercise of its faculties. This 
is the first birth, which begins in the formation 
of the spirit and body, and is completed by 
instruction, information, and development, By 



THE NEW BIRTH. 21 

this birth man is a child of nature. He must be 
re-born; or, rather, there must be born in him 
the internal man, with its heavenly faculties. 
These faculties are created in his first formation 
and birth. The preparation for this development 
goes on during the instruction and development 
of the natural mind and will. Heavenly good 
and truth are stored away in the successive 
planes of the internal man by means of all that 
man learns, feels, and delights in during infancy 
and childhood; principally by means of the 
Word and its truths and the child's delight in 
them and in obeying them as the teaching of 
God. While hereditary evils are comparatively 
quiescent, these truths can be implanted and 
such states of innocent faith and obedience 
induced. 

As the child comes to manhood, the selfhood 
develops; evils are perceived as delightful and 
good; and the man is called upon in freedom and 
reason to accept, adopt, and obey as of himself 
those precepts and truths implanted in him by 
the Lord during his infancy and childhood. 
Now, without the direct, miraculous work of 



22 THE NEW BIRTH. 

God, performed through the angelic heavens 
upon the spirit of man, implanting and ordering 
goods and truths in the understanding and will 
of the external mind, and filling with heavenly 
states and seeds of heavenly character the uncon- 
scious degrees of the internal man, and thus 
recreating the soul from above, man could never 
see the kingdom of God. Without the written 
Word and the disposition to accept it, learn it, 
and obey it as God's Word, this work could 
never be accomplished. Its truths are the 
heavenly seed implanted in the soil of the natu- 
ral mind, and the affections of delight in holy 
things, and in obedience to what is right and 
good, are the "good ground" which receive it. 
Thus preparation is made while man is developing 
to rationality and freedom. Then man begins to 
act from himself. The spirit of the Lord flows 
into his soul, quickens these affections, enlightens 
those truths, and imparts an impulse to adopt 
and live according to them. If man yields to 
this impelling and vivifying spirit and the truths 
of the Word, then the seeds of heavenly life ger- 
minate under the light and heat of heaven's sun; 



THE NEW BIRTH. 23 

the commandments of God seem good and pleas- 
ant; the will determines to accept, adopt, and 
live them. Then heavenly things begin to live 
and grow and obtain foothold in the earth of the 
natural mind. Man distinguishes between the 
things that are of God and the things that are 
from himself. Hereditary evils come into play, 
and the new will and the truths it adopts come 
into conflict with the old will and its persuasions. 
On the one hand, the will to live as the Lord 
lives, to do His truth and awake with His image; 
on the other, self-will, with the natural mind 
believing in the supreme good of this world, and 
an inclination to all evils as delightful. 

Thus the new birth no longer comes forth 
naturally and easily as the harmonious opening 
of the higher plans of the mind, but with travail 
and conflict. The two natures contend in man 
for mastery, and "the holy thing" that is from 
God in the soul, the new nature with its heaven- 
ly purpose, has to struggle for supremacy as 
enrolled on God's side in the conflict of the ages 
and fighting with the weapons of truth let down 
from heaven in the Word of God. 



24 THE NEW BIRTH. 

The new birth is not a development of latent 
possibilities which come forth at the call of 
aspiration and desire; it is the formation of a 
new nature, not only higher, but in direct con- 
flict with the natural mind and all its inclinations 
and impulses, which are evil. It is not brought 
forth by the sudden and irresistible exercise of 
God's power, nor by man's use of his own natu- 
ral powers; but by the formation of a new man 
within, to whom God gives power to combat 
and subdue the old man without. It requires, 
therefore, not only the Word of God as a means 
of implanting truths in early years, and the 
presence of God ordering and preparing the 
mind for this struggle; it requires that, but 
requires also that the adult man shall distinctly 
acknowledge that God as Redeemer and Savior, 
and accept and adopt that Word as God's law, 
and freely as of himself fight for God by the 
truths of the Word against himself and his own 
evil and selfish delights. 

O holy and miraculous Word of God ! That 
not only instructs us what we are and what we 
need, but brings God down to us, and the forms 



THE NEW BIRTH. 25 

of His goodness and truth, where we can accept 
them, and he can vivify them to be the knowl- 
edge and power of God in us unto salvation. 
That man might have this faith and power of 
obedience, God came into the w T orld and took 
our nature upon Him, endured this conflict and 
overcame that He might be not onlv the 
quickener of our spirits, but the captain of our 
salvation. "To him that overcometh, will I 
give to sit with me in my throne; even as I also 
overcame, and am set down with my Father in 
in His throne. " 

ii. 

REGENERATION PROGRESSIVE. 

In the foregoing outline of doctrine it is in- 
volved that regeneration is a gradual and pro- 
gressive work. The scriptural emblems so 
present it. It is called a " birth," and therefore 
involves a beginning, with gradual and progres- 
sive processes of development. It is compared 
to " growth from a seed," and therefore involves 
a reception, germination and development. It 



26 THE NEW BIRTH. 

is represented as a " conquest," and therefore 
involves preparation, growth and discipline. 

Why regeneration should have been conceived 
of as an instantaneous change, it is not easy to 
say. Certainly the Scriptures give no warrant 
for such a conception. They uniformly com- 
pare it to natural processes, and throughout 
universal nature a single instance can not be 
produced in which anything is made complete 
and perfect at once. Everything has a begin- 
ning, a progression and a maturity. In animate 
nature, every living form, and every change in 
a living form is a progressive birth. There is 
first the seed, then the germ, the shoot, the 
stalk, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit and seed 
for further propagation. 

" So is the Kingdom of God, as if a man should 
cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and 
rise night and day, and the seed should spring 
and grow up he knoweth not how. For the 
earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the 
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
Thus the kingdom of heaven, which is not here 
or there but within, is likened to the progressive 



THE NEW BIRTH. 27 

processes of growth from seed. The seed from 
which it begins is the truth of the Word; for the 
sower, our Lord said, u is the Son of Man," and 
u the sower soweth the Word." The first stage 
of regeneration in man is the reception of truth 
from the Word, into the ground of an " honest 
and good heart." Next are produced such 
things as are of intelligence, signified by the 
leaf and the blade. Next, such things as are of 
wisdom, signified by the blossoming ear. And 
finally, such things as are of life, the full corn 
in the ear, or those good deeds which proceed 
from a matured and living principle of obedience 
to the Lord. By this representative similitude, 
therefore, which our Lord himself has given, 
we know 7 that the stages of regeneration are 
distinct, its progressions gradual, and that the 
vital processes are unknown; " the seed should 
spring and grow up he knoweth not how." 

The parable of the new birth is susceptible of 
an equally particular development. Our Lord 
does not institute a comparison merely, but 
asserts an actual birth. Nicodemus was think- 
ing only of natural things, and our Lord 



28 THE NEW BIRTH. 9 

explains His meaning, but He retains the idea 
of birth. " Except a man be born of water, 
and of the Spirit, he can not see the kingdom of 
God." 

Water signifies the divine truths of the Word. 
This is the " water of life, 1 ' which whosoever 
will may take freely. " Whosoever drinketh of 
the water that I shall give him shall never 
thirst," but it " shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life." That is, 
the divine truth of the Word is not only able to 
satisfy man's desire to know of heavenly things, 
but, vivified in him by the spirit of the Lord, it 
becomes a fountain of intelligence and wisdom. 
The water of Baptism represents those doctrinal 
precepts from the Word by which we are to 
purify and regulate our lives; and the washing 
of Baptism, signifies that spiritual purification 
which belongs to the work of regeneration. 
"Now ye are clean through the Word which I 
have spoken unto you." . "Christ loved the 
Church, and gave himself for it, that he might 
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water 
by the Word." 



THE NEW BIBTH. 29 

This is the water of which a man must be 
born to see the Kingdom of God. He must 
have a new mind formed in him by instructions 
in the truths of the Word of God. And he is 
born of the " Spirit," when, by the reception 
and practical adoption of divine truths, he 
determines his life in accordance with them. 
Whatever proceeds from man's love, or the rul- 
ing principle of his life, is called his spirit; 
and when he lives in obedience to the truths of 
the Word, there is born within him a new will, 
receptive of a new life of love from the Lord. 
In a word, the Divine truths are first received 
into man's understanding, and by faith in these 
truths he mentally adopts them as principles of 
action. When these truths are thus known, 
understood and adopted, they produce a change 
in the intellectual form of the mind, by remov- 
ing the false and evil principles which pre- 
viously ruled there; and this change is being 
"born of water." Afterward, when these 
truths, as convictions of man's understanding, 
act upon his will, and remove from his conduct 
all false and evil practices, there results a change 



30 THE NEW BIRTH. 

in his love and consequent life, and this is being 
born of the Spirit." 

This change is analogous to conception, gesta- 
tion and birth. The reception of truth in the 
understanding is only the first stage of the 
regenerative process. The spiritual man is thus 
only mentally conceived. In the next stage, 
birth becomes a matter of will; and one may 
will and intend truth some time before he can 
bring it into practice. The truth must be per- 
fectly formed in his will before he can bring it 
forth. This is spiritual gestation. When man 
from the will does bring the truth into act, 
and thus make it a matter of life, it becomes a 
living thing and is said to be born or brought 
forth. 

The new birth is not instantaneous and per- 
ceptible to' man; on the contrary it has its order- 
ly processes, and they are secret and unperceived 
until they come to their effects in the external 
life. We look upon the seed, and wonder at the 
final growth. The naturalist may display to us 
the processes of growth, but he can not make it 
grow. He may teach us of the structure of the 



THE NEW BIRTH. 31 

seed and its capacity to receive the sun, which 
shines upon the broad world, into its bosom. 
He may teach us how every process of germina- 
tion and growth is the effect of forces within 
and forces without, "and predetermined by a 
covenant of nature ordered and sure"; but the 
mystery of life is in that power which cometh 
down from above, and worketh whereunto it is 
sent. Its secret and orderly processes of growth 
we can not produce; and we meddle with them 
at the peril of the harvest. We can only sow 
and wait, supplying the conditions of soil, and air, 
and water. The embryologist may display to 
us the stages in the holy processes of birth; 
but the life by which those processes are carried 
forward is the Life of Him " whose eyes did see 
my substance being yet imperfect, and in whose 
book my members were written, which in con- 
tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there 
were none of them." So of the new birth, its 
processes are gradual and progressive, depend- 
ing upon man's fulfillment of conditions, but 
they are of the spirit and power of the Lord. 
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou 



32 THE NEW BIRTH. 

hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
whence it eometh, nor whither it goeth. So 
is everyone that is born of the Spirit." "By 
the wind blowing where it listeth, or the Spirit 
breathing where it willeth, is signified that the 
Lord, of divine truth, out of mercy, gives new 
life; by hearing the voice thereof, is signified 
that those things come to perception in the 
external or natural man; and by not knowing 
whence it cometh or whither it goeth, is signi- 
fied that man does not perceive how regeneration 
is effected, for it is by innumerable and secret 
means from the Lord." 



m. 

THE MEANS OF REGENERATION. 

Regeneration is effected by the Lord alone, 
but not without the use of means involving 
man's consent and co-operation. In all life, pro- 
duction, reproduction, there is an active and a 
passive. The active acts, and the passive acts 
from the active, so that one action arises from 



THE NEW BIRTH. 33 

both. The one operates, the other co-operates 
from the power passing over from the operator. 
Wherever there is any religion, therefore, there 
must be two parties to constitute it ; God oper- 
ates, and man co-operates, that there may be 
conjunction between them. And there are two 
means to this conjunction, the good of love and 
the truth of faith. The good of love, which is 
life eternal, flows in from the Lord by an in- 
ward w r ay into all souls ; and the truth of faith 
is presented outwardly by means of divine reve- 
lation and instruction. So far as any one can 
be led to learn, accept and live according to the 
truths of faith, the Lord by the inward opera- 
tion of His spirit conjoins the good of love, and 
thus quickens, reforms and regenerates. The 
Lord also gives the truths of faith ; and the 
power to accept, understand and live according 
to them is also of His inflowing Spirit, in which 
is life, and "whose. life is the light of men." 
But because this divine influx is unperceived, 
and because man appears to acquire the truths 
of faith by his own effort, therefore he is in 
freedom to determine his life in accordance with 

3 



34 THE NEW BIRTH. 

them as of himself, and thus to receive and co- 
operate with the will and word of the Lord. It 
is really of the Lord by means of the love and 
faith which He imparts; but with man's co-oper- 
ation, the power of which the Lord also imparts. 
Therefore it is said of the Lord as the Word 
that "He came unto His own," and "as many 
as received Him, to them gave He power to 
become the Sons of God, even to them that be- 
lieve on His name: which were born, not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God " That is, clearly, God 
is the actor, but He gives to man the power of 
reaction and reciprocation. He not only imparts 
life and light, but also the power to receive and 
believe ; and they receive the Lord who admit 
the spirit of His love into their affections, and 
they believe on Him who admit the spirit of 
His truth into their understandings. The life 
that issues is not of man, not of the evils of self- 
love nor of the persuasions of self-intelligence, 
but of God. 

Regeneration is therefore effected by the 
Lord's operation and man's co-operation ; and 



THE NEW BIRTH. 35 

the means are two-fold on the Lord's part, and 
on man's part. 

THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

The Lord, the Saviour, Jesus Christ is the 
Regenerator; and regeneration is the work of 
His Holy Spirit. How shall we think of His 
Holy Spirit, and of its operation ? 

With His disciples about Him on the eve of 
His crucifixion, the Lord sought to prepare 
them for the withdrawal of His bodily presence 
from them, and to fix their hope upon the 
promise of His spiritual presence. He had 
said : "I will not leave you comfortless ; I will 
come to you." They were filled with sorrow, 
for they had lived witli Him, learned of Him, as 
of a man among them, and were as yet unable 
to conceive how He could be present otherwise. 
He said: " Let not your heart be troubled, 
neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I 
said unto you, I go away and come again unto 
you." " Because I have said these things unto 
you sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, 
I tell you of a truth it is expedient for you that 



36 THE NEW BIRTH. 

I go away ; for if I go not away the Comforter 
will not come unto you, but if I depart I will 
send Him unto you. And when He is come He 
will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, 
and of judgment." He told them He had many 
things to say which they could not yet learn, and 
promised that when the Spirit of truth, the Com- 
forter, should come He would guide them into 
all truth, as he had already said the Holy Spirit 
should bring all things to their remembrance 
whatsoever He had spoken unto them. 

They were soon to receive illustration of the 
meaning of this promise ; but as if to guard them 
from possibility of misconception as to the mean- 
ing of his words, He, standing before them, 
after His resurrection, in His glorified body, 
" breathed on them, and said, 'Receive ye the 
Holy Spirit. 5 " Thus He taught them by the 
most powerful of all teaching, the - representa- 
tive and dramatic, that the Holy Spirit is His 
Spirit, the out-breathed sphere and energy of 
His life, which he had called "the spirit of 
truth," saying, a He dwelleth with you and 
shall be in you." And finally, on the day of 



THE NEW BIRTH. 37 

Ascension, before He was parted from them, He 
commanded them to u tarry in the city of Jeru- 
salem until endowed with power from on high." 
Their mission henceforth was to preach a risen 
Lord and inspire that faith which believes with- 
out having seen. They had to direct men's gaze 
and attention, not to the visible person of Jesus 
on earth, but to the glorified Redeemer on His 
throne in heaven, and in His kingdom within. 
The commission had been given them, but not 
yet the power to preach the saving Word ; for 
this they needed that the Lord should come to 
them as the Holy Spirit, with the power of the 
highest, to illumine and teach the Church on 
earth. And on the day of Pentecost it came, 
flashing back the light of fulfillment upon this 
whole chain of divine promise. The Spirit of 
the Lord came upon them as the breath of His 
divine life, mediated by His glorified humanity 
to their waiting souls. It shone in their minds 
as light. It flamed in their hearts as the zeal of 
love. It flowed forth in their efforts as the 
power of the Highest. It abode with them and 
dwelt in them, as the spirit of truth emanating 



38 THE NEW BIRTH. 

from the glorified Lord, enlightening, vivifying, 
supporting, and comforting His disciples, and 
by imparting to them His own nature, testifying 
of Him. 

The doctrine of all this Scripture is perfectly 
plain. The Holy Spirit is the proceeding spirit 
and life of Jesus as the human nature, and con- 
sequent form, which the divine essence assumed 
and glorified on the earth. He assumed human- 
ity in the world. He removed all its limitations 
and imperfections, and glorified it with His 
divine fullness, as the medium of the life of 
goodness and truth and power unto men. The 
humanity of Christ could not become the me- 
dium of the power of the Highest, except as it 
was wholly conformed to the divine essence as its 
soul; and hence it was said, "The Holy Spirit 
was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glori- 
fied." But when that human nature was wholly 
conformed to the divine, it became the mediator 
by whom the spirit of divine love and wisdom 
is imparted to men, to remove sin, to inspire holi- 
ness, to give counsel, to guide and to bless. The 
Holy Spirit is not an impersonal influence which 



THE NEW BIRTH. 39 

pervades humanity, nor a blind, unconscious force 
that is one with nature. It is the proceeding 
life, and thus the personal sphere of Jesus 
Christ. "In Him dwells all the fullness of the 
Godhead bodily " — that is, in His glorified per- 
son; and from Him is all light, life and quicken- 
ing. The Father is in Him and the Holy Spirit 
is from Him. 

And this is that blessed Trinity which the 
gospel presents to us in the Lord. The Father, 
that is the invisible and incomprehensible divine 
essence, in the Son or Glorified person of Christ, 
proceeding forth as the life or Spirit of truth for 
the regeneration of man. It was for this that He 
assumed humanity and glorified it, that the 
spirit and power of the Highest might be poured 
out upon all flesh. All other mediums of the 
impartation of the life of truth to men had be- 
come insufficient ; but the humanity of Christ, 
filled with the divine fullness, is able to bring it 
in tender adaptation to every human condition. 
Hence the giving of the Holy Spirit marked a 
new dispensation in the history of the Church, 
and brought a new power to bear upon men. 



40 THE NEW BIRTH. 

He spoke of this sending forth of His spirit 
as His coming, "I will come to you"; for it is 
His spiritual presence. He spoke of it as the 
spirit of truth which shall guide us into all 
truth ; for it is the influence of his own life re- 
vealing in the soul the vital meaning and power 
of the divine truths which come to us by instruc- 
tion. He said the Father should send the Holy 
Spirit in His name ; because it is the power of 
the Highest mediated to our reception in and 
through the divine humanity which He is. He 
said it should testify of Him because it is His 
own life, imparting His own nature to all who 
will open their hearts to receive it. He repre- 
sents it as His breath, His divine effluence and 
His human influence breathing into men the 
breath of lives. 

The question arises here, upon what in man 
shall this inflowing spirit of the Saviour operate? 
In the beginning God created the heavens and 
the earth, but the earth was without form and 
void. In the beginning was the "Word, and the 
Word is the light of men ; but the light shineth 
in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it 



THE NEW BIRTH. 41 

not. The divine virtue and operation proceed- 
ing from the Lord must find something of its 
own in man, before it can be received and effect 
a new birth. Therefore He gives the written 
Word to bear witness to the light. The opera- 
tion of His spirit is external as well as internal. 
There is an old controversy as to the origin 
of ideas in the mind, which is answered here. On 
the one hand it has been maintained that the 
mind at birth is an utter blank, and remains a 
blank until impressions through the senses of 
the body have written upon it something called 
an idea. On the other hand it has been con- 
tended that there are innate convictions and per- 
ceptions in the new-born soul which gradually 
unfold themselves, and from wdiich come what- 
ever supreme light and guidance the soul re- 
ceives in its search for truth. The advocates of 
one theory hold that all ideas of God and all 
spiritual life must have been developed naturally 
from impressions received through the senses. 
The others maintain that the Father of spirits is 
in intimate and close relation with the spirits of 
men, and that this relation is manifest in certain 



42 THE NEW BIRTH. 

high instincts and convictions of the soul. Both 
are correct as to half the truth ; but neither 
taken by itself presents the whole truth. Divine 
life and light are indeed given to the soul by an 
inner way, but not through natal germs which 
develop themselves, and not any faster than 
mental forms to receive this inner light are pro- 
cured through impressions and knowledges con- 
veyed to the soul by its senses. All life and all 
ideas in man are the marvelous development of 
the divine operation in the inmost and outmost 
plane of his nature. This is as true of all our 
ideas of natural things as it is of our ideas of 
God and of spiritual things. There are given 
forms from without, and light from within. 

Man is by creation and birth a form recipient 
of life. Life is in God and from God; man is 
only a recipient form into which divine life 
flows. Life comes to us and works in us, both 
in the inmosts of the soul and in the plane of 
the senses ; and " the life is the light of men." 
We become conscious of the light first in the 
manifold impressions of the senses. These con- 
stitute the forms of ideas into which the divine 



THE NEW BIRTH 43 

light of intelligence flows to complete, trans- 
figure and perfect them in the ideas of thought- 
We would have no power to see, to hear, to re- 
ceive any of the countless impressions which 
come to us from without, except by the immediate 
influx of the divine light into the mental plane 
of sensation ; and we would have no power to 
think about these sensations and form ideas of 
them without the mediate influx of divine light 
through the higher planes of the soul to illumi- 
nate and vivify them. The same is true of all 
knowledge which we receive by instruction ; it 
supplies mental forms, which become the mother 
of ideas as they receive the impregnating life 
from within. 

You see at once that this doctrine of the 
origin of ideas must qualify our understand- 
ing of how God reveals himself to man and 
imparts His goodness and wisdom. He comes 
to us by instruction, manifestations, theophanies, 
incarnation ; He tells of His existence, unity, 
nature, will, and works, in words and forms 
which are the symbols of truth and are appreci- 
able by our natural affections and thoughts 



44 THE NEW BIRTH. 

already formed ; but these alone do not reveal 
Him without that inner light of the divine love, 
which is life, and is able to make alive the dead 
symbols of knowledge we have received from 
without. Peter said: " Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the living God ; " but he did not 
know it from what he had seen and heard. He 
had heard that Jesus was the Messiah. He had 
lived with Him, heard His teaching, seen His 
works, received through all the means of external 
association the influence of His life ; but this 
had not produced conviction in his own soul. 
All this was necessary, but alone it was not suf- 
ficient. A deeper and more interior light was 
needed to make those impressions live. A 
deeper and secret source of life was opened 
w r ithin him in the divine love which he had re- 
ceived into his own warm affection for the truth. 
Therefore, Jesus said: u Flesh and blood hath 
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which 
is in heaven." 

Thus, God reveals Himself to man by accom- 
modated external manifestations and instruc- 
tions, and by an influx within which is able to 



THE NEW BIRTH. 45 

make these real to the sight of faith according 
to man's reception of it. Without instruction, 
indeed, we have no forms into which the light 
of the divine life may flow ; but the instruction 
received from without has in itself no power to 
evolve faith without the inflowing light of divine 
life. This necessity is not peculiar to the sub- 
ject before us ; it belongs to all the operations of 
the mind which result in intelligence or mental 
sight. We need experience, or that form of 
accumulated experience which is treasured up 
in instruction ; and we need the light which, 
flowing into the mind, converts the knowledge 
thus received into the superlative and satisfying 
conviction which leads us to say U I see.' 5 And 
in accommodation to this law of the mind, God 
reveals Himself to man by the light of His life, 
operating through two channels — one which 
opens outward in his relation to the world, and 
the other which opens upward to the spiritual 
and the divine. We have an external revelation 
of God in the Sacred Scriptures ; and for all 
practical purposes of an external revelation, one 
that is sufficient. We may ask, indeed, as so 



46 THE NEW BIRTH. 

many are asking: "How was it before the 
Sacred Scriptures were given ? How is it with 
the heathen who have not the Bible ? " And the 
New Church answers these questions by showing 
us how primeval men, in the true order of their 
life, received the illuminating light of the 
divine spirit into their perceptions of nature, and 
beheld the things of the spirit of God, " even His 
eternal power and Godhead," in "the things 
that are made." With primitive man the in- 
ternal influx of divine life and light was unob- 
structed bv a rebellious will, and it flowed down 
through the will into the ideas of nature, giving 
rise to spiritual thoughts of God and truth 
divine. Thus they were able to receive some- 
thing of His love and wisdom, and could have 
true ideas of Him, and could even see Him 
manifested before the sight of the mind. But 
when by moral evil this interior reception of the 
light of divine revelation was turned into dark- 
ness in their voluntary life, the book of nature 
furnished no longer an adequate external revela- 
tion of God. They were unable to perceive the 
divine nature and attributes in the symbols 



THE NEW BIBTH. 47 

without. Then the Lord presented Himself and 
His truth in adapted forms of revelation, in 
representative symbols and doctrine. As man- 
kind lost more and more the divine image, this 
revelation was brought down into forms which 
appealed directly to the state and thought of his 
life, and which the divine spirit might trans- 
figure and vivify to all who opened their hearts 
to it. These forms of external revelation we 
have in our Sacred Scriptures ; and all nations 
and peoples have something of them in the tra- 
ditions of their religion. He hath not left Him- 
self without a witness among any people ; and 
in every nation, whosoever fears God and lives 
according to the precepts of his religion has 
opened the inner and deeper sources of revela- 
tion from the divine spirit. 

In our own Scriptures we have this external 
revelation of God in forms suited to all our 
needs. The revelation is multiform, but the 
natural idea of God which it presents is in- 
telligible and harmonious. God reveals Him- 
self to us as Creator, Redeemer and Saviour, 
all-loving, all wise ; and more than all a per- 



48 THE NEW BIRTH. 

sonal being, a revealing God, a God speak- 
ing through angels, or by the ministration of 
prophets, or in the Humanity which He assumed 
among men and glorified, in whom "dwelleth 
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." And 
this revelation finds a response in us. We do 
not love abstractions. It is not " love " that we 
love, but a being who loves ; it is not "wisdom " 
we admire, but a being who is wise-, it is not 
"might " we respect, but a being who is mighty. 
In revealing Himself as a being of love and 
wisdom, and power, and even as a Divine Human 
personality, He imparts to us positive conceptions 
of His real relation to us. He is not an abstrac- 
tion, He is not a negation ; He is a Heavenly 
Father, working for the happiness of His chil- 
dren ; a king reigning over His subjects ; a law- 
giver guiding them in the ways of righteousness 
and peace ; a redeemer, fighting their battles 
against their enemies ; a Saviour, living with 
them and suffering with them, bearing with 
them the burden of evil and the self-denial that 
triumphs over it. These ideas are definite and 
positive. They are such as man is able to re- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 49 

ceive. They are such as his whole nature de- 
mands. They are such as the Scriptures con- 
sistently present, in the progressive external 
revelation which culminates in the glorified 
Christ of the Apocalypse, a Divine Man, who 
loves, guides, helps, restrains, judges and blesses 
His children ; who stands at the door of every 
heart and knocks, waiting to be admitted, that 
He may enter and conjoin it to Himself in the 
communication of His good gifts of eternal life. 
As an external revelation this is sufficient. Men 
may speculate; but they can not suggest anything 
important to be known which is not included in 
this revelation. And yet it is not alone sufficient 
to reveal God to the heart's perception and the 
mind's conviction, so that the soul may live with 
Him as its trusted Saviour and beloved Father. 
Men know all these things, and yet know not 
God. We know these truths of external reve- 
lation ; and yet in every trouble we cry out as 
children who are lost, and in every struggle 
plan and fight alone, as men who have no divine 
friend. Therefore we need light from within, 
the light of life the light of the divine love 



50 THE NEW BIRTH. 

flowing in through the heart's eager affection for 
the truth. No teaching from without, no 
miracles, no authority, ever fastened the Chris- 
tian faith in a single soul, so that hell did not 
prevail against it, unless they were quickened 
by a divine influence flowing into the soul by 
another way. No man can say that Jesus is 
Lord, says the apostle, without the Holy Spirit. 
No man can see any truth in its spiritual and 
divine reality except by the light of God's life 
shining in the earnest affections of the heart. 
When God's external revelation of Himself is 
met in the soul by the inflowing inspiration of 
His spirit, it is vivified and converted into the 
perceptions of a faith that has the confidence of 
sight ; and until this comes to a man he can not 
say "I know that my redeemer liveth." Until 
thus vivified and illustrated, the truths of the 
written Word lie in the mind as the dry and 
dead facts of a science which the child remem- 
bers but does not understand and can not apply. 
This, then, is the Lord's two-fold operation : 
The revelation of God, and of the mind of God, 
in Jesus Christ and in the Word which He ful- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 51 

filled and embodied and vindicated in His divine 
human life ; and, second, the impartation of the 
life of God, and the wisdom and power of God, 
through the Divine Humanity of the Saviour to 
quicken the Word in the soul and impart spiritual 
life and faith. 

MAN'S CO-OPERATION 

The Lord thus provides the means by which 
man may acknowledge Him, learn truths from 
the Word, and live according to them. So far 
as man uses these means, the Lord works in 
him faith, repentance, conversion, reformation 
and regeneration. Man can acknowledge the 
Lord if He wills to do so ; he can learn truths 
from the Word if he is disposed to do so ; and 
he can live as the Lord teaches if he will. This 
is for man to will and to do as of himself; the 
Lord's inflowing spirit converts that will and 
deed into spiritual charity and faith. 

There is in all Sacred Scripture no other hope 
of eternal life held out to man. The Lord will 
do His part. He needs no reconciling sacrifice. 
He only asks man to put himself in an attitude 



52 THE NEW BIBTH 

to receive His regenerating grace. He requires 
this, because only so can His love and wisdom 
be lived into us so as to appear as our own : 
"that they may have my joy fulfilled in them- 
selves." He came into the world to provide for 
us and teach us this way of salvation. He not 
only tells us about it, but shows saving truth 
and life in Himself. " I am the way, the truth, 
and the life." We must approach the Lord 
Jesus Christ alone: "Come unto me." He 
does not direct us to another for anything that we 
need; not to an invisible God whom we can 
neither think of nor love, but to Himself. He 
does not say another will give us rest for his 
sake, but that He will give it ; not that He will 
obtain what we need from a Father who would 
overlook us, but that He will give unto us all 
that we need, for He has all power in heaven 
and earth, and is one with the Father. "No 
man cometh unto the Father but by me." They 
who go to Him go to the Father also at the 
same time, and thus to the One and only God; 
and there is no saving faith in any other, nor 
any other way of approach to God. " The 



THE NEW BIBTR. 53 

Lord God, the Saviour, because He is God and 
Man, may both be approached and seen in 
thought ; faith in Him has a definite object, and 
when once it is received it remains." We can 
think of Him as He revealed Himself in the 
world ; as He manifested Himself in the trans- 
figuration, and in His glorified body after the 
resurrection ; as He is seen and worshipped in 
heaven, not only in the ideas of their thought as 
an all-glorious Divine Man, but as He is some- 
times manifested to their very sight. He is the 
one God. There is no confusion of persons. 
The Father is in Him ; the Holy Spirit is from 
Him. The thought is to rest in Him. Prayers 
are to be directed to Him. Then all divine 
truths center in Him ; each reveals something 
of His love and wdsdom ; and the more genuine, 
revealed truth the mind can acquire, the more it 
knows of divine goodness, the more clearly it 
sees and the better it knows the Lord w r ho is 
goodness itself and truth itself. Then every- 
thing that we learn from the Word helps to 
bring before us one whom we can love, not 
abstractly, as we love a principle or an idea, but 



54 THE NEW BIRTH. 

really, as we love a Saviour and a friend. "The 
sight of this faith is as if any one sees a bright 
cloud and an angel in the midst of it, who in- 
vites the man to Him that he may be elevated 
into heaven. Thus the Lord appears to those 
who have faith in Him . . . and at length 
He comes into the house and makes His abode 
with him, together with the Father who is in 
Him." 

We are to approach Him as the disciple 
approaches his master, as the learner approaches 
his teacher, where He has appointed to be, by 
the application of mind and heart, to the pre- 
cepts of his instruction. It is to love Him, and 
to desire to be with Him where He has appointed 
to be ; it is to love what He loves and is. It is 
an act of the understanding directed to His 
sacred person, and to His words and works, by 
which He manifested forth His divine essential 
goodness and truth ; it is also an act of the heart, 
adoring Him, yielding itself to his instruction, 
imploring His divine presence and power to do 
His will. To approach the Lord is also to 
approach His Word, where He has revealed 



THE NEW BIRTH. 55 

Himself, spoken to us, and where He is continu- 
ally present to instruct, inspire and impart to us 
affections of good and power of obedience. 

All this man can do as of himself, by the 
power of the Lord's spirit continually imparted 
to him, and the instruction in goodness and truth 
provided for him. "If a man love me he will 
keep my words." "If ye keep my command- 
ments ye shall abide in my love." "If ye 
abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall 
ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." 
This is the Lord's easy yoke : to look to Him 
and do what He commands. It is easy because 
He works within us to will and to do, and re- 
quires of us, simply, so much co-operation as is 
necessary to keep us in that "divine sphere of 
celestial love which proceeds from the Lord to 
all who embrace the doctrine of His Church and 
who obey Him, as little children in the world 
obey father and mother, apply themselves to 
Him, and desire to be nourished, that is, in- 
structed by Him." * " When man has made a 
beginning, the Lord works in him for the pro- 

*True Christian Religion, n. 308. 



56 THE NEW BIRTH. 

duction of all kinds of good, and enables him 
not only to see his evils, but also to will against 
them, and finally to abhor them. This is meant 
by the Lord's words, 'My yoke is easy, and 
my burden is light. 5 "* 

As one "accustoms himself" to think of the 
Lord and His truth, and when any evil occurs 
or is suggested in his mind, to think that it 
ought not to be done because it is contrary to 
the Lord's commandments, and as he "from 
practice acquires the habit of so thinking, he 
then by degrees is conjoined to heaven." " But 
it is to be observed that the difficulty of so 
thinking and also of resisting evil increases in 
proportion as man from will commits evils"; 
and also in proportion to man's neglect of those 
means by which the mind is trained and prac- 
ticed in the habit of so thinking. 

THE FUNCTION OF WORSHIP. 

Here we see the importance of worship and 
devotional culture as a means of bringing the 
Lord's Holy Spirit and man's free and intel- 

* Heaven and Hell, n. 533. 



THE NEW BIRTH. 57 

ligent obedience into union. Worship is that 
intercourse which a man seeks between himself, 
as a person, and the Lord. Any bridge that you 
expect to throw across the gulf that separates 
man from God, earth from heaven, sin from 
holiness, must rest upon two piers : a divine 
Personality who lives and rules with wise good- 
will; and a finite personality who voluntarily 
seeks to know and obey that will. Worship is 
such a bridge. It is the very essence of all re- 
ligion. It is means and end: the means of 
bringing the finite person into the presence and 
under the influence of the divine Person ; and 
when it has become " accustomed and habitual," 
it constitutes a state of union and communion 
which is eternal life. Opinions, dogmas, knowl- 
edges, do not enter into the realm of religion 
until they enter into our worship, that is, until 
they are regarded before God and in personal 
acknowledgment of Him as the Author and 
Finisher of faith. Our resolutions and good 
works, however right morally, do not enter into 
the realm of religion until they grow out of our 



58 THE NEW BIRTH. 

worship, that is, acknowledgment of the Lord 
and His law. 

In one aspect worship consists of a series of 
acts, whereby the soul consciously and volun- 
tarily puts itself in the presence of the Lord as 
a disciple, a suppliant and a servant. These 
voluntary acts of the mind include acknowledg- 
ment, prayer, confession, adoration and such 
like things. 

In all such acts it is necessary that we should 
realize the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal, vis- 
ible, approachable God, with whom we may be 
united in love and faith. This is the very doc- 
trine of the Scriptures, and the first essential of 
all religion : That God is to be worshipped in 
his divine humanity; that the "Lord is the 
Father in visible form ; •' that " the idea of God 
in heaven is the idea of the Lord ; n and that He 
is to be thought of and worshipped as the very 
glorious, divine Man with His face and form 
bright and shining with love and wisdom, and 
thus as the Lord Jesus Christ glorified. 

It is not forgotten that God is a spirit, but He 
is a spirit because He is Divine and Absolute 



THE JSTBW BIBTR. 59 

Man. There would seem to be a wide-spread 
feeling, and more or less clearly defined thought, 
that would be expressed something in this way : 
" God is a spirit, and as such is always with us 
and in us. If we are willing to have good done 
and the truth prevail, He can bring out the 
higher powers of our nature, and lead us into 
wisdom, and arm us with fortitude according to 
the laws of His providence ordained in the soul. 
We have only to walk on humbly, loving mercy 
and doing justly." But the Scriptures do not 
say any such thing as is implied in this senti- 
ment. What they do say is that we should 
" walk humbly with God ; " and the distinction 
is that no man can walk humbly till he has 
turned himself as a person to a personal God 
and come to an understanding and agreement 
with Him. He who thinks he can is deceived. 
He who thinks he does well to consider God as 
a spirit in the sense of an inspiring force, even 
though it be a divine force, enters upon the 
sliding scale of declining faith that will come to 
its eclipse in the worship of nature and faith. 
He will never love these things. The Spirit 



60 THE NEW BIBTH 

which is God, is the Spirit of a divinely personal 
will and intelligence ; and for the purposes of 
worship and religion is to be addressed in the 
second person singular, u O thou that hearest 
prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come." Any 
spirit which you can not define in the terms of 
personal love and wisdom, personal goodness 
and truth, is not God's Spirit. Men thus try to 
think of God's Spirit as a kind of universal heat 
and light ; but heat and light are from the sun, 
and to get their full power you must stand under. 
Yea, and more, this heat and light of God's 
Spirit are His love and wisdom, and they imply 
a lover and thinker, and the reception of them 
implies a voluntary approach to the will and 
mind whence they are dispensed, and thus inter- 
course and communion between man and God. 

In the acts of worship, moreover, the soul 
must not onlv realize the Lord to itself, it must 
also realize itself before the Lord. You can not 
have a devout spirit, therefore, without devout 
acts and words. The spirit of man is no more 
indefinite and impersonal than the Spirit of God. 
It is the spirit of will and thought. How shall 



THE NEW BIRTH. 61 

a man, then, know what spirit he is of until 
he defines it in the terms of thought and desire? 
And until he has thus defined it and knows, how 
shall he bring it into correspondence and com- 
munion with the Lord's Spirit? It must be evi- 
dent that this fiction of a prayerful and devout 
spirit, without prayerful and devout acts, directed 
to a God whom we do not take the trouble to 
define and approach, and of whom we only 
desire that He will be God and do what He will, 
tends really to divorce religion from life, and to 
leave the major part of our desires, thoughts 
and pursuits without religious control. The 
heart is eager with desires, the quality of which 
can only be known as they are defined to the 
thought, and brought before the Lord, and to 
the judgment of His divine truth, as in the very 
presence of our adorable Priest and King. Man 
must voluntarily present himself to the Lord, 
and, by definite acts of the mind, acknowledge 
Him, examine himself, confess his sins, implore 
the divine help, and submit his thought to the 
divine truth, and his will to the divine will, as 
he is able in and through such devout acts to 



62 THE NEW BIBTH 

realize the one and the other. Until he does this 
he does not know himself nor realize the Lord's 
will with respect to himself. 

Worship, in another aspect, is a state induced 
upon the life. When one has, by " practice " in 
the acts of worship, " acquired the habit" of 
acknowledgment and self-examination, and 
prayer, and determination to obedience, they 
become inscribed upon the whole life, and active 
in all the processes of his desire and thought. 
This is indeed a holy and devout spirit, attained, 
not by thinking of it as an abstract thing to be 
desired, but by the faithful practice of those 
exercises and acts by which the mind and will 
are trained to refer all things to the Lord and 
His commandments. That all pious acts should 
proceed from an interior principle of love and 
faith is true indeed ; else were they an empty 
form. But if the end we set before us is con- 
junction with the Lord, in and by means of his 
divine will and Word, then these pious acts 
should receive our whole attention in their time ; 
for they are instrumental, and "the end is con- 
tinually present" in them, and " secretly rules 



THE NEW BIRTH. 63 

all and every single thing." "The end regarded 
and the habit thence, imbues every one ; " and 
if our religion is to be what we are all the time 
asserting it should be, " a practical religion," it 
must be made practical by the redaction of its 
principles to practice, in the performance of those 
acts which serve as means to the attainment of 
the end. 

The function of prayer and devotional culture 
in the regenerate life is not to instruct the Lord 
as to our needs, or make Him more willing to 
do us good, but it is to bring the soul and its 
knowledge of His will and its purpose of obedi- 
ence under the direct influence of His Holy 
Spirit. Piety is not religion, but a means to 
that end. It is a principle of religion, for ex- 
ample, that man should look to the Lord, and 
that this is essential to internal love and faith 
and to an external life of righteousness and 
truth. But who finds this possible without dis- 
tinct acts of the mind and will ? And how shall 
it become habitual so that it is tacit in every 
work without training in meditation, prayer, 
self-examination and all those acts of pious dis- 



64 THE NEW BIRTH. 

cipline by which the soul is opened to the light 
and life of truth, and its thoughts and affections 
directed to a personal Lord, and determined in 
obedience to His felt presence and command in 
His Word. These means of discipline do indeed 
avail nothing without the end, of being interiorly 
conjoined with the Lord, is present in them; 
but in so far as it is present, they become essen- 
tial to it, because instrumental to its realization. 
The same is true of shunning evil3 as sins, and 
the bringing of the acknowledgment of the Lord 
and the repentance of sin into the daily life. It 
can not be effected by intending it, or thinking 
and acknowledging that it ought to be done, but 
by the use of those means whereby the mind 
and its affections are ordered and rendered 
obedient, and this repeatedly, till it becomes 
" accustomed," and, as it were, automatic to the 
higher impulses of the will and the dictates of 
duty. Practical righteousness without acts of 
prayer, without acts of self-examination and re- 
pentance, without interior study and thought, is 
a thing impossible ; and yet we often see what 
passes for such and believes itself to be such. It 



THE NEW BIRTH. 65 

is not righteousness; it is only morality, un- 
touched by the regenerating fires of religion, 
and boasting itself in the imagination of a spirit- 
uality which it does not understand. Daily 
obedience in actual life, and daily devotion, are 
not to be thought of as independent things ; but 
as closely related and dependent upon each 
other. They "are the web and woof of the 
Christian life ; both are in the ground-work of 
the stuff." Both are necessary to the growth of 
internal love and faith ; and if any distinctions 
are to be made they must come to this : that 
while external worship may exist without love, 
love can not exist without its indicating sis:ns, 
which are the externals of worship. What then 
becomes of that vain and boastful spirituality 
which prides itself on being able to dispense 
with external worship? And what of that cold 
and heartless indifference to the means and end 
of personal union and communion with the 
Lord, which leaves us without study and medi- 
tation and prayer, without self-examination be- 
fore God, without even the sacraments of the 
Church, immersed in the world and its affairs, 

5 



66 THE NEW BIRTH 

and excusing ourselves under the plea that all 
religion is in life, and only a good life is essen- 
tial? It is to the end of a good life that these 
things are instrumental. What we need is not 
prayer that the Lord will convert us by some 
irresistible operation of His Spirit without any 
co-operation on our part, but that He will teach 
and dispose and empower us to do what He will 
have us do. And for this we need a devotional 
habit, formed by devotional acts, not merely re- 
garded as admissible when we feel like perform- 
ing them, but required by duty when we do not 
feel inclined to them. They are not merely ex- 
ercises to play out impulse and inclination and 
perception, but also, as Dr. Bushnell said, to 
kindle impulse and beget inclination and open 
the way for perception. 

rv. 

THE STAGES OF REGENERATION. 
Fundamental in the doctrine of regeneration 
here presented is the idea of progressive growth, 
with divine preparation and orderly develop- 
ment. The end qualifies all things from the 



THE NEW BIRTH. 67 

beginning ; and the end of God in the creation 
and regeneration of man is a heaven of angels 
to whom He may impart His Divine love and 
wisdom in blessing, and who may receive and 
reciprocate that imparted life in voluntary and 
wise usefulness. Heavenly blessedness is the 
end of our regeneration. What does it involve? 
The revelations of immortality open for us a 
"door in heaven" through which we may be- 
hold, not only the outward conditions of heaven- 
ly life, but the inward state and fountain of 
heavenly blessedness. What does the revela- 
tion show? 

It shows that the inmost source of heavenly 
blessedness is union with the Lord.; and this 
union involves man's voluntary cooperation with 
the divine will. Union with God is not absorp- 
tion in God ; not the identification of man's 
will with God's will, but the reconciliation of 
the two. "Abide in Me, and I in you," saith 
the Lord ; and this internal union is set before 
us in the Word as the secret origin of delight, 
and of joy unutterable. It is full, deep, and 
complete. In its presence all care, anxiety, and 



68 THE NEW BIRTH. 

disquietude are hushed. The Lamb that is in 
the midst of the throne feeds them and leads 
them to fountains of living water; the divine 
innocence flows inmostly into them and fills 
them with goodness and wisdom. 

The second source of heavenly blessedness 
is the harmony of principles in angelic character. 
The human mind, in its irreligious state, is like 
an unregulated kingdom; the king is unacknowl- 
edged, and all the subject faculties are in 
rebellion and conflict. The passions are wild, 
impure, avaricious, and urge a thousand things 
which conscience, reason, and common sense 
condemn. Talents exist without judgment, 
practice without principle. We are harps, every 
string of which is out of tune. The affections 
which should rule serve; the reason which should 
guide is guided by passions which have no title 
to existence but in subjection. The angels, 
however, have chosen the Lord for king, His 
commandments for law. They have fought and 
won the victory. They have denied their unruly 
appetites; have yearned for and struggled after 
spiritual order and freedom, until the fetters of 



THE NEW BIRTH. 69 

enslaving lusts have been broken, and they 
walk in the glorious liberty of the children of 
light. The will, brought into reconciliation 
with the divine will, has subdued and ordered 
its affections, and through these has brought all 
its faculties of performance into symmetry and 
harmony. Truth hath sprung out of the earth, 
and righteousness hath looked down from 
heaven, and they have met and blended in the 
supreme regions of the soul, and diffused tran- 
quillity and blessedness throughout. The house 
is no longer divided against itself. 

The third source of angelic blessedness is 
the harmony of mutual love, and the com- 
munion of uses and joys. The angels are happy 
and at peace because reconciled and conjoined 
to the Lord, and because their minds are regu- 
lated and harmonized under one controlling 
principle; and also because they are in harmony 
with each other. They have in them the Lord's 
love of giving. They love to communicate 
their bliss to each other. Love harmonizes, and 
they are brought into the union of the children 
of God from the common love of the Lord* 



70 THE NEW BIBTH. 

One differs from another, as one star differs 
from another star in glory; but they belong to 
the universal harmony of one ordered system. 
With their special gifts exalted, matured, and 
multiplied, they find their joy in giving, each to 
all, the uses and blessings of their several exper- 
iences. Indeed, the only things they have are 
what they give or wish to give. Thus, while 
each is himself, the good of each is the good of 
all; and while each labors for the universal 
advancement it is manifest that there is peace, 
harmony, and the joy of satisfied love. 

The fourth source of blessedness is the har- 
mony between the souls of the angels and their 
surrounding circumstances. The revelations of 
the spiritual world show it to be plastic to mind 
and character. Harmony and beauty within is 
reflected in the outer world of phenomena. The 
scenerv and circumstances of life in heaven are 
the outbirth of the pure affections and chaste 
thoughts of the angels, their heavenly culture 
and internal life. The houses, the paradises, 
the light, the warmth, the colors, the sounds, 
and the odor of incense, with their ineffable 



THE NEW BIRTH 71 

sensations of delight, are all qualified by the 
spiritual states of the angels, and belong to 
them and go with them, as a garment that fits 
the form. They do not belong to a walled city, 
into the comforts and pleasures of which we 
may enter if by any means we can find admit- 
tance at the gates. They can only be realized 
and enjoyed by the soul which has fulfilled the 
inward and spiritual conditions of life and peace. 



l.—THE STAGE OF PREPARATION. 

This end ot the Lord in the creation of man, 
realized in heaven by those who suffer them- 
selves to be regenerated, is present at man's 
birth and in all the manifold conditions of his 
life in the world. He who creates us that He 
may make angels of us, provides that our life 
shall begin in the sphere, and under the min- 
istry of those angels " who do always behold 
the face of our Father in the heavens." Thev 
watch over the embryonic development, min- 
ister at the crisis of birth, enfold and keep the 
infant soul in the embrace of their own inno- 



72 THE NEW BIRTH. 

cence, and shed their softened peaceful sphere 
over the mother's first devotions. 

How important this preparation is we shall 
see if we remember what our nature is as the 
hereditary result of sin. When we reflect that 
the " selfhood of man is evil from birth;" 
when we know that the love of self and the love 
of the world belonging to man by heredity in- 
volve in themselves all evils; when we know 
that evil spirits have access to man through 
these loves, and "if they find a soul turned 
away from God, incite, seduce and drag that 
soul down to hell," we may indeed marvel how 
any can be saved. "Except the Lord had left 
to us a very small remnant, we should have been 
as Sodom, and like unto Gomorrah ! " Except 
our life began in heaven, and in its first years 
had something of innocence, charity and mercy 
insinuated by the ministry of angels, there 
would be no heaven for us at last ! 

H1NDERANCES. 

It is important to an understanding of the 
Lord's preparation for man's regeneration to 
know what our nature is by birth and exactly 



TEE NEW BIRTH. 73 

what that inheritance is which is sometimes 
called " natural depravity." 

There is a great deal of erroneous thought 
upon this subject from the profound and general 
ignorance as to the substantial and organic form 
of the human soul. Man is not an abstraction, 
but a spiritual, organic form ; and the effect of 
disobedience to the laws of spiritual life is in 
the perversion of the organic functions of the 
soul, and consequent deterioration of its sub- 
stantial form ; sin is a spiritual disease, a disease 
of an immortal organism. And, therefore, as it 
becomes deep-seated and chronic by disobedi- 
ence, and is not brought to the healing touch of 
the divine physician by repentance, it issues in 
confirmed spiritual disorder. Every one writes 
the record of his own sin, and lays up his pun- 
ishment in his own soul in its perverted spiritual 
forms. Hereditary sin, or transmitted guilt, is 
an idea which can not be expressed except in 
terms of self-contradiction. But hereditary evil 
is a different thing. It is the transmitted dete- 
rioration of the substantial human form ; the 
transmission of a perverted spiritual organism. 



74 THE NEW BIRTH. 

It is thus that the iniquity of the fathers is 
visited upon the children. " Transmissive dis- 
positions and proclivities to evil, coming down 
a long line of tainted ancestry, and gathering 
strength and volume on their way by every 
generation that transmits them, is a fact that is 
universal, and so an irreversible law of human 
descent." This is illustrated not only in that the 
race lies in spiritual darkness, each generation 
receiving from the past its gloomy superstitions 
and predispositions to evil, but also in the per- 
sistency with which nations and families perpet- 
uate their characteristics. Time and culture and 
physical environment exert their modifying in- 
fluence within a certain range, but " during 
three or four generations, and, indeed, during 
any known historical periods, they never break 
up the type." Types of character, and the 
image of these in the physical form are trans- 
mitted with such constancy and tendency to 
accumulation that the trained observer, as soon 
as he looks on the human form, though it be 
that of the sleeping child, knows the race and 
sometimes the tribe and family to which it be- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 75 

longs. Every fact of observation and experi- 
ence, every truth of the Word of God confirms 
the doctrine of the New Church, that the fathers 
transmit to the children, not character, but 
modifications of substantial organic form, which 
qualify the inflowing life and create propensities 
and proclivities which had been confirmed in the 
voluntary lives of the progenitors. The whole 
subject is illustrated in hereditary predisposition 
to diseases of body. Disease is not transmitted, 
but a perverted organism which, under the ex- 
citement resulting from carelessness, or from 
favoring abuses, is felt as a propensity and de- 
veloped in disease. And every confirmation of 
the disease results in the still further deteriora- 
tion of the organism and its transmission to its 
own offspring. And this is the real image of 
the corresponding spiritual fact. When evil 
has become fixed in mind and will and life, and 
thus perverted the function and form of the 
soul, that determination of the substantial spirit- 
ual form is carried over to the offspring ; and 
under the excitation of influx from attendant 
evil spirits it is perceived as a propensity. And if 



76 THE NEW BIRTH. 

its transmission is not arrested by regeneration, 
through the shunning of evil because it is sin, 
the propensity is transmitted with accumulated 
power to the next generation. Thus it is that 
the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the 
children. It is thus that we bear in us the 
marks of our lineage in general and in particu- 
lar ; thus that the fathers' sins have impressed 
upon our spiritual organism such abnormal bent 
and perversity as had resulted in themselves, 
and which are felt by us as propensities to evil. 
But this is only one side of the truth. If this 
alone were known, it might seem just to say, 
" The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the 
children's teeth are set on edge." But this 
proverb of Israel the Lord declares to be a very 
foolish meditation for the children. It is true 
that the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon 
the children as predisposition and propensity to 
evil. But the truth is worth more as a warning 
to parents than as an excuse for children. For 
this also is true, that those propensities are 
balanced by angelic and divine influences, so 
that every soul is free to resist them and turn 



THE NEW BIRTH. 77 

from them. A propensity is not a sin ; there is 
no transmission of guilt ; there is no punish- 
ment except for the evil that passes into deed 
through our volitions. In some sense it is true 
that we inherit the consequences, in a deterior- 
ated spiritual organism, of the sins of our fore- 
fathers. But that neither increases nor dimin- 
ishes our responsibility an iota. It has no bear- 
ing on our eternal destiny unless we are indif- 
ferent. It may increase the severity of our 
temptations, but the omnipotence of the Re- 
deemer is ours if we choose to resist the propen- 
sities which we inherit. "Now, lo ! if one beget 
a son that seeth all his father's sins which he 
hath done, and considerateth, and doeth not 
such like, he shall not die for the iniquity of his 
father, he shall surely live." 

When both these facts are rightly appre- 
hended, there is no contradiction in the Bible 
upon this subject. It must be well remembered, 
on the one hand, that depravity is not sin, is not 
guilt, but only a deteriorated organic form pre- 
disposing to evil. The son has in his nature the 
faulty dispositions of his parents, but he is in 



78 THE NEW BIRTH. 

no sense responsible for them. They do not 
constitute moral character so long as they lie 
simply in the form of impulses and propensities. 
Only they are sure to be excited ; and then, if 
they are indulged, and subsequently unrepented 
of, they become our sins, and pass on with 
acquired strength as propensities in our children. 
This is a truth of divine revelation, and is 
meant when it is said, "the iniquity of the 
fathers is visited upon the children," that "we 
are conceived in sin," and such like expressions. 
It is confirmed by human history and every-day 
observation. It has passed into our current 
proverbs : "A chip of the old block ; " " Like 
father, like son." 

GERMS OF HEAVENLY LIFE. 
But on the other hand is the truth, which we 
are much more likely to forget, that the propen- 
sities are balanced by angelic ministries and 
divinely implanted germs of good. There are 
degrees of the human soul which are divine and 
heavenly, and discretely above and out of the 
reach of evil. By means of them the Lord and 



THE NEW BIRTH. 79 

the angels have the first chance with all little 
children- They approach us in our infancy from 

the spiritual side of our nature, and plant the 

germs of future good and truth, by which to 

lead us in our manhood. The means of future 

grace and salvation are not all in the keeping of 

parents and preachers. 

"The infant face, so round and small, 
Index of scarcely aught at all, 
Hath delicate motions, not its own, 
Dimples like shadows o'er it thrown, 
The last faint trembling terminations 
Of wonderful irradiations 
From angel presences within, 
And those eternal powers to which we are akin." 

These " remains," as they are termed in the 
doctrines of the New Church, from the reference 
in the Word to the ' Remnant,' " are not only the 
goods and truths acquired by man from infancy, 
from the Word of the Lord, and thus impressed 
upon his memory, but likewise all the states 
thence derived; as states of innocence from in- 
fancy, of love toward parents, brethren, instruc- 
tors and friends; of charity toward the neighbor, 
and also of compassion toward the poor and 
needy, in a word, all states of goodness and 



80 THE NEW BIRTH. 

truth. These states, with the good and truth 
impressed upon the memory, are preserved in 
man by the Lord, being stored up in his internal 
man without his consciousness, and carefully 
separated from whatever is of his selfhood, or 
from evils and falses. All these states are so 
carefully treasured up by the Lord that not the 
least of them is lost, as was proved by the 
fact that every state of man from infancy to 
extreme old age, not only remains in another 
life, but also returns, and this exactly such as 
they were during his abode in this world. Thus 
not only the goods and truths stored up in the 
memory remain and return, but likewise all the 
states of innocence and charity; and when states 
of evil and the false, or of wickedness and phan- 
tas}^ occur, as they do, both generally and 
particularly, as to every minute circumstance, 
then these latter are attempered by the Lord by 
means of the former, from which it is evident 
that unless man had some remains he could not 
possibly avoid eternal condemnation."* 

Thus from the earliest infancy the soul is 

* Arcana Ccelestia n. 561. 



THE NEW BIRTH. 81 

introduced by the Lord into heaven by the min- 
istry of celestial angels, who keep it in a state of 
innocence. When the age of childhood begins, 
with its desire for society and its love of know- 
ing, innocence recedes, but by the ministry of 
spiritual angels the soul is kept in affections of 
love towards playmates, parents, and instructors, 
and in obedience to authority. And by every 
infantile and childlike emotion, by every purely 
tender and comparatively unselfish act, and by 
every truth implanted in affection and delight, 
the angels insinuate and implant in the interiors 
of the soul states of love and faith and obedience 
to return in after life. They " remain" and 

"Are treasures inly stored away; 
Into their forms like dew into the flower 
The Lord distills his vivifying power, 

And blessings they become forever; 

States of the mind which perish never; 

But losing every tint of sadness 

Return with multiplying gladness; 

Germs of eternal happiness 

Which never cease to grow and bless; 

Strength for the seasons of temptation, 

Means of eventual renovation, 
The bonds that link us to the angels most — 
The light which may be hidden, but never can be lost! " 



82 THE NEW BIRTH. 

This provision of infinite love for the insinua- 
tion in the earliest years of such things as may 
serve as a ground to receive the seeds of good 
and truth, explains and reconciles the facts of 
man's hereditary evil and his free and full re- 
sponsibility. By the storing of remains of good 
and truth hereditary evils are modified, and 
planes are formed in the will and understanding 
for the reception of influx from the Lord to 
enlighten, quicken and lead him in freedom 
according to reason. This doctrine is clearly set 
forth in the following passage from the writings 
of the New Church : 

" There are appertaining to every man two 
parts, the will and the understanding ; the will 
is the primary part, the understanding the sec- 
ondary : and man's life after death is according 
to his voluntary part, not according to his intel- 
lectual. The will in man is formed by the Lord, 
in the period from infancy to childhood: it is 
effected by the insinuation of innocence and 
charity toward his parents, nurses and play- 
mates, and by many other things of which man 
is ignorant, and which are celestial things ; un- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 83 

less such celestial things were first insinuated in 
man during infancy and childhood, he could by 
no means become a man. Thus is formed the 
first plane. But as man is not man unless he be 
also endowed with understanding, will alone not 
constituting manhood, but understanding with 
will, and as understanding can not be procured 
except by sciences and knowledges, therefore 
from childhood he is to be endued with these. 
Thus is formed the second plane. When the 
intellectual part is furnished with sciences and 
knowledges, especially with the knowledges of 
truth and goodness, then first man is in a 
capacity to be regenerated ; and during his 
regeneration truths and goods from the Lord 
are by means of knowledges implanted in the 
celestial things with which he was gifted by the 
Lord from infancy, so that things intellectual 
form a one with the remains in the will. When 
these are thus conjoined by the Lord, he is 
gifted with charity, and begins to act from that 
principle as a principle of conscience. He thus 
receives new life, and this by degrees; the 
light of this life is called wisdom, which then 



84 THE NEW BIRTH. 

takes the first place, and is then exalted above 
intelligence. Thus is formed the third plane. 
When man becomes such in the life of the 
body, in the other life he is continually per- 
fected."* 

When the will comes to its estate of self-de- 
termination and begins to exercise in freedom its 
power of choice and thought, it is already fur- 
nished, therefore, with a certain measure of 
moral sense and judgment. This moral capital 
might be greatly increased doubtless if the 
functions of home, of the Church, and of soci- 
ety, were more faithfully performed toward the 
young, but it is sufficient for the direction of 
life, if not for its perfection, and is greater than 
we are sometimes willing to allow. It is formed 
by other influences than those of this world 
alone ; influences working with these but unseen 
and for the most part unsuspected. The angels 
by their presence and ministry, make a little 
kindness, a little truth, a little piety and fear of 
the Lord, go a great way in providing these in- 
terior states of goodness and truth. They 

* Arcana Ccelestia n. 1555. 



THE NEW BIRTH. 85 

remain, and return with wonderful power, and 
speak with awful authority, in the shifting alter- 
natives of the most worldly life. 

During the implantation of these " remains," 
first of good, then of truth, by means of the 
presence and ministry of angels, hereditary evils 
are kept, so far as may be, quiescent. They are 
latent, indeed, in self-love and the love of 
acquisition ; and these are developed from the 
first. The love of self grows out of the con- 
sciousness of self and belongs with it. As it 
was necessary to create man with a sense of self- 
hood and individuality, as the basis of all he 
shall be and enjoy, so it is necessary to bring 
forth in him the love of himself as the basis of 
all he shall purpose and achieve. As it is neces- 
sary to lay the foundation of spiritual life in 
earthly sensibilities and forms, so it is necessary 
that the substances and forces and forms and 
relations of the world should affect man with 
delight. With self-hood and sensibilitv, self- 
love and love of the world follow. Without 
these it would be as impossible for man to 
became an angel as to become a devil ; he could 



86 THE NEW BIBTH. 

have no moral quality ; he could accomplish as 
little for the service of God in the service of 
man, as he could accomplish in works of evil. 
They are as necessary to the higher life of man 
as the crust of the earth to the life developed 
upon it. Therefore they are implanted in the 
very nature of man, and, as instrumental to his 
higher life, are developed with the unfolding of 
his nature. They grow together with the pow- 
ers of body and mind, both as the means and the 
effect, of their development. They are natural 
to man and necessary ; but then they are hered- 
itarily infernal, inclined to delight in every evil, 
and ambitious to rule over the higher affections, 
to prevent their development, and supplant their 
authority. We see that even in the very little 
child, who often becomes the autocrat of the 
household, regards all things as his own, fights 
for them, or screams in impotent anger when 
refused. According to his hereditary bent the 
affections of evil, in direful combinations, are 
latent in his self-love. During infancy and 
childhood they are, by the angelic sphere of 
innocence and mutual love, kept more or less 



THE NEW BIRTH. 87 

quiescent ; and as they begin to show themselves 
they are softened and repressed by the delights 
which the angels adjoin to the natural love of 
instruction and obedience. As one begins to 
think for himself, and restraints are withdrawn, 
he calls forth these evils more and more, and 
desires them and delights in them. What was 
hereditary tendency becomes actual desire and 
deed. With the natural inclinations to evils, 
goes association with wicked spirits. In the 
earlier years, these associations are controlled, 
and the tendency to indulgence of evil loves is 
moderated, by means of "remains"; but as age 
advances and self-hood develops, this becomes 
more difficult. 

These remains constitute a ground for the 
reception of instruction from the Word, and are 
meant by the "good ground" of the parable. 
In childhood they eagerly seize upon the truth 
of faith : That there is a God, and that He is 
one ; that He has created all things ; that He 
rewards those who do well, aud punishes those 
who do evils ; that there is a life after death, and 
that the wicked go into hell and the good into 



88 THE NEW BIRTH. 

heaven ; thus that there are a heaven and a hell ; 
that the life after death is eternal ; also that we 
ought to pray daily, and this with humility, that 
the sabbath is to be accounted holy, that parents 
are to be honored, and that we are not to com- 
mit adultery, to kill, or to steal, and like things. 
The child believes these truths. Innocence helps 
them forward and fixes them in the memory. 
The delights of the angels in them are impressed 
upon the interiors ; and in after life when such 
truths recur, these states return, and if man 
inclines to them he is said to receive the seed of 
the Word in the "good ground" of an " honest 
and good heart." They are germs and first 
principles of heavenly life, and are represented 
by the " little ones" and the " little child" set 
as the type of the kingdom of heaven. They 
are the innocent and good things which are said 
to be "lost" when self-love becomes active and 
man is immersed in its delights and thoughts of 
the world. They are then carefully separated 
from what is evil and false, and withdrawn into 
the interiors and carefully protected. They are 
the u lost sheep," the states of innocence and 



THE NEW BIRTH. 89 

mutual love, which the Lord comes "to seek 
and to save." 

There are thus developed two currents of love 
and thought, two sources of delight, two habits 
of life : One induced by the angels through the 
remains of good and truth interiorly stored 
away ; and the other from the delights of self- 
love and the persuasions of the senses, to the 
evil of which man is hereditarily inclined, and 
which evil spirits excite and call forth. Through 
remains the means of regeneration come home 
to man and affect him ; but they are not his 
own except as in rationality and freedom, acting 
as of himself without compulsion, he inclines 
to them, adopts them, and asserts them against 
the evils of the natural man. Then the work 
of regeneration begins. 

2.- THE STAGE OF REFORMATION. 

The first stage of the actual work of regener- 
ation is reformation. It consists in thinking and 
acting from divine truth. It involves a reversal 
of the natural inclinations of self-love, and a 
change in the habits and thoughts of life, 



90 THE NEW BIRTH. 

attended with self-compulsion. It is a new- 
formation of ends, purposes and plans, with a 
compelled obedience to the laws of spiritual life, 
which not only opens the spiritual mind within^ 
but orders and arranges the natural mind for 
its birth into all things of the actual life. 

REPENTANCE. 

The first essential in this work is repentance. 
As the good of remains is withdrawn, and the 
self-hood asserts itself and worldly knowledges 
become more delightful, what self desires is 
adopted as an end of life, and the mere appear- 
ances and fallacies of worldly life are accepted 
and confirmed. In this state one loves himself 
above all ; is concerned and studious about him- 
self and his advancement and gains ; calls that 
good which delights self, and regards as truth 
all that favors self with its honors and gains. 
The repentance which begins the personal relig- 
ious life is an entire change of the mental stand- 
point and of the life's ends. It is not mere sorrow 
for sin ; though it may involve that. It is change 
of mind. It calls to a new allegiance. Instead 



THE NEW BIBTK 91 

of regarding life and duty from the standpoint 
of self and the world, they must be regarded 
from the standpoint of allegiance and obedience 
to the Lord. What He calls evil is a sin, and is 
forbidden because it is a sin. What He calls 
truth is revealed because it is true and is to be 
accepted as such. Instead of judging truths 
by the appearances of life and the persuasions 
of one's own desires, all such things are to be 
judged by the thought of what the Lord reveals. 
It is change of allegiance, and consequently of 
the whole habit of thinking ; and whereas he 
had thought first of himself and what he desires 
and fancies, he must think first of the Lord and 
what He reveals and commands. 

Repentance is also a change of ends. The 
man naturally regards everything with respect 
to himself and his inclination and interest in this 
present life ; and he is to change his end and 
motive of action to regard for eternal life. The 
world is not what it seems. It will pass away. 
Its good is deceptive. The senses were not 
born to rule. The laws of spiritual life are the 
only standard of genuine and eternal good. 



92 



THE NEW BIBTH. 



Only character formed in obedience to those 
laws will remain and insure heavenly blessed- 
ness in the other life. 

This change of allegiance and of the end of 
life, changes everything. It gives a new value to 
self-denial, a new motive to resolution, and throws 
a new light upon truth and duty. Evils which be- 
fore appeared allowable are seen as sins, confes- 
sed, abhorred and actually resisted and combatted 
when they recur. Duties which seemed of little 
value are seen in new light and performed from 
a new motive. A new plane of life is opened 
from within, and the "old man with his deeds" 
can be gradually put off. Only actual repent- 
ance however avails anything ; and actual 
repentance is to look to the Lord, examine 
one's self by His Word and shun evils as sins. 
And actual repentance has to be continually 
renewed. We can not receive truths all at once ; 
nor can we shun our evils in the bulk. The 
hereditary nature is a complex world of dark- 
ness and evil, to be explored and conquered as 
we are able to be bear the light and endure the 
conflict. We do not begin at all until we put 



THE NEW BIRTH. 93 

ourselves on the Lord's side, under His guid- 
ance, for the ends of eternal life ; and when 
man has made a beginning, each advance reveals 
new light upon dark places, develops new en- 
trenchments of evil, requiring us to look to our 
Master and renew our purpose. Nor is it mere 
sorrow and contrition for sin, at any stage of 
man's progress ; but an actual seeing of evils in 
one's self, a disavowal of them in thought, an 
appeal to the Lord, and a resistance of them in 
practice. So far as man can be led to practice 
such repentance, the remains stored up within 
him, are brought forth, adopted as his own, and 
made serviceable in establishing not only a habit 
of thought and obedience but a new will in the 
image and the likeness of the Lord's will. 

CONVERSION. 

This work of reformation is otherwise called 
conversion. It is a reversal of the thoughts and 
ends of life. It is a return to first principles. 
" Except ye be converted and become as little 
children, ye can not see the kingdom of 
God." It is turning from self-love and the con- 



94 THE NEW BIRTH. 

ceits of its persuasions and opinions, to the 
states of innocence and mutual love, which re- 
main from infancy and childhood ; and a change 
of life bv obedience to those truths from the 
Word of the Lord received in such states. Such 
a change has to take place once for the first 
time, as the conscious and free act of the soul ; 
but not once for all. It has to be repeated, 
until there is established a habit of turning and 
of being turned. Since this involves continual 
regard to the Lord and His Word, it is said to 
be the work of faith ; and since it involves a 
real change both in purpose and practice it is 
called obedience to the commandments. All 
these things go on together, and develop grad- 
ually and successively, under the Holy Spirit 
with man's consent and co-operation. It is in 
no stage a mere emotion, but throughout a 
change of mind and reformation of conduct. 
We may see how the Lord applies the divine 
means of regeneration, and what man must 
actually perform, from the following analysis : 
" When a man begins to think from himself, 
which is the case after the age of youth, it 






THE NEW BIRTH. 95 

must then be the first and primary principle 
with him to desist from doing evils because they 
are sins against the Word, and thus against 
God ; and if he does them he can not go into 
life eternal but into hell ; and afterwards as he 
advances in vears to shun them as accursed, and 
to turn away from them even in thought and 
intention. But in order to desist from them, 
and shun them and become averse to them, he 
must supplicate the Lord for His aid. The sins 
from which he must desist, and which he must 
shun and become averse to, are principally 
adulteries, frauds, unlawful gains, hatred, re- 
venge, lies, blasphemies, and a puffed-up mind. 
" In proportion as a man detests those things 
by reason of their being against the Word, and 
thence against God, in the same proportion com- 
munication is given him with the Lord, and 
conjunction is effected with heaven. But if a 
man desists from evils from any other cause 
than that they are sins, and against the Word, 
and thence against God, no conjunction with 
heaven is effected for him, because his desisting 
is from himself and not from the Lord. 



96 THE NEW BIRTH. 

"So far, then, as man detests those sins, so 
far good affections enter. As, for example, in 
so far as he detests adulteries, in so far chastity 
enters. In so far as he detests frauds and un- 
lawful gains, in so far sincerity and justice en- 
ter. In so far as he detests hatred and revenge, 
in so far charity enters. In so far as he detests 
lies and blasphemies, in so far truth enters. And 
in so far as he detests a puffed-up mind, in so 
far enter humility before God, and the love of 
his neighbor as himself. 

"In so far as man is in these good affections, 
in so far he is led of the Lord, and not of him- 
self ; and in so far as he acts from them, in so 
far he does good works, because he does them 
from the Lord and not from himself. 

'"The spiritual affections, which the Lord be- 
stows upon the man who is in these principles 
and acts from them, are the affections of know- 
ing and understanding the goods and truths of 
heaven and the church, together with the affec- 
tion of willing and doing them ; in like manner 
the affection, attended with zeal, of combatting 
against the evil and false, and dissipating them, 



THE NEW BIRTH. 97 

both in himself and others. Hence man has 
faith and love, and hence also he has intelligence 
and wisdom. 

"Thus and no otherwise is man reformed. 
And in so far as he knows and believes truths, 
and wills and does them, in so far he is regener- 
ated, and from a natural becomes a spiritual 
man."* 

3.— REGENERATION'. 

In the stage of reformation man is led by 
truths to compel himself to shun evil and do 
good ; but as he is by such means brought into 
order and gifted by the Lord with affections of 
willing and doing what the Lord commands, a 
reversal takes place. He is gifted with a new 
will. Inclination coincides with duty. He 
loves the Lord's good will ; and the will's love 
then flows into the understanding, impelling and 
leading it to think in agreement with its own 
love. He is a new creature ; and all things are 
gradually, progressively, and wonderfully made 
new. He abides in the Lord ; and the Lord's 
life works in him to order, quicken and purify 

* Apocalypse Explained, n. 803. 
7 



98 TEE NEW BIBTH. 

and sanctify by the truth. When this acknowl- 
edgment ot the will takes place then all the 
blessings and graces of regeneration presently 
follow ; for then the Lord is present and opera- 
tive in the centre of his life, and his religion in 
such case consists in bringing every affection, 
thought, word and work, into subordination and 
correspondence with the Lord's will and Word. 
The work can not be suddenly accomplished ; 
nor at all without temptations. u The reason is, 
that all things which man has thought, intended 
and done from infancy, have added themselves 
to his life, and have made it, and have formed 
such a connection among themselves that one can 
not be removed unless all are removed with it. 
For an evil man is an image of hell, and a good 
man is an image of heaven ; and evils and falses 
with an evil man have also such a connection 
among themselves as exist among infernal soci- 
eties of which he is a part ; and goods and 
truths with a good man have such a connection 
among themselves as exist among the heavenly 
societies of which he is a part. Hence it is evi- 
dent that evils and falsities can not be suddenly 



THE NEW BIRTH. 99 

removed ; but so far as goods and truths are 
implanted in their order interiorly ; for heaven 
removes hell with man."* 

TEMPTATIONS. 

The means by which all things in man are 
made new from the Lord are spiritual tempta- 
tions. Thev are from the conflict between the 
Spirit and the devil ; the Holy Spirit of life 
and wisdom from the Lord, operating through 
the angels who receive it, and the infernal spirits 
of evil and falsity in the societies of hell. The 
angels are with us to protect us and do us good ; 
the devils are with us to seduce us and 
do us hurt. Each party finds something in 
us in affinity with its own purposes and life ; 
and the sphere of each excites in us those affec- 
tions which are in harmony with itself. It may 
be only treasured states of infant innocence, the 
remains of good feeling and unselfish love left 
over from our tender years, some forgotten im- 
pulse of goodness or tender memory ; some 
precept of righteousness learned by the bedside 

* Arcana Coelestia, n. 933. 



100 THE NEW BIRTH. 

or at mother's knee, or it may be a mature and 
rationally formed purpose to "do justly, love 
mercy, and walk humbly with God," — some- 
thing on the side of heaven the angels find in us, 
and their presence quickens it into the whisper- 
ings of a still small voice, or the trumpet tones 
of a command, according to our need. On the 
other hand, the evil spirits find in the selfish 
affections of our nature, — in the lusts of ambition 
or of ease, or other form of self-gratification ; in 
the cooling embers of a past fire of passion, or 
revenge, or jealousy, or in some latent proclivity 
never before uncovered, — a possibility of evil 
which they can fan into a flame of desire. And 
these good and bad prompters of our good and 
bad desires and thoughts are intelligent ; they 
have some idea of consequences ; they feel these 
desires in themselves with distinct foresight of 
their outcome ; and thejr strive together for 
mastery. Their antagonism would separate 
them inevitably, were it not that they have a 
common field of activity in the mind of man. 
The point of association with one host is the af- 
fection of truth and goodness in man ; with the 



THE NE W BIRTH 101 

other, the affection of evil and error ; and since 
by hereditary and acquired nature these oppos- 
ing affections contend together in the same 
mind, the opposing hosts of angelic and wicked 
spirit are held together in combat till man 
freely turns himself to one or the other from in- 
telligent and settled purpose. 

Why are these conflicts ? Because the powers 
within us can not otherwise be called forth ; be- 
cause the hereditary tendencies to evil can not 
otherwise be brought to light, removed, and 
subdued ; because a voluntary life of righteous- 
ness and truth can not otherwise be begun and 
carried forward. It is the only way to make 
angels of us, and therefore it is ordained, 
though it puts in our way terrible possibilities 
of evil. They are occasions for the voluntary 
choice of the ways of righteousness. They are 
a means of self-revelation. They teach us 
our dependence on the Lord. All this means trial 
and pain, and we do not like to think of it. So 
the Lord makes use of our highest form of self- 
ishness, and allows us to think of the great re- 
ward, — "the exceeding great reward of glory." 



102 THE NEW BIRTH. 

He shows us the end of heaven and peace, and 
how worthy it is of every trial of discipline, 
that He may strengthen us to choose faithfully 
in every alternative, and bear patiently in every 
anxiety and trial, u looking unto the mountains 
whence cometh out strength." There are evils 
in us to be overcome ; there are possibilities of 
good in us to be developed ; there are self-de- 
ceptions to be dissipated ; there are errors and 
damaging persuasions to be corrected ; and for 
all this we need the exceedingly complicated 
discipline of life, with its alternatives, its trials, 
its disappointments, its mistakes, and even its 
wrong and criminal performances, with all their 
inexorable consequences. Yea, and in all this 
the immediate consequences must be hidden 
from us, that our actions and determinations 
may be voluntary, and thus human. So He 
shows us the outcome and the general meaning 
of it all ; but not the particular guidance of His 

hand. 

" We see the end, the house of God, 
But not the path to that abode ; 
For God, in ways we have not known, 
Will lead His own." 



THE NEW BIRTH. 103 

"If any man be in Christ," however, "he 
is a new creature." If interiorly in the 
acknowledgment of the Lord, and that all 
good and truth are from him through heaven, 
and nothing from self, he is "in the Stream of 
Providence, and is continually and steadily 
borne on to the felicities of eternal life what- 
ever may be the appearance of the means." In 
all the vicissitudes of life, the Lord seeing the 
end from the beginning, sets about us that disci- 
pline which will bring us to the relatively best, 
and works in patience to beget his love's re- 
sponse in us. He ' c will bring the blind by a way 
they know not, and lead them in paths they have 
not known ; He will make darkness light before 
them and crooked things straight. These things 
will he do unto them and not forsake them." 
This is the mystery of God's ways to His own ; 
man fully free in the choice of life's conduct ; 
and yet secretly drawn by. the Lord's Holy 
Spirit unto Himself. By every thought of 
truth, of heaven and eternal life ; by every im- 
pulse to do right and resist evil ; by every utter- 
ance of prayer ; by every exercise of trust in 



104 THE NEW BIRTH. 

the Lord and His providence ; and secondly, by 
every ordering of external circumstances which 
help us to these things, — constantly drawn unto 
God. Not by the conscious invasion of our life, 
and destruction of our freedom ; not by appar- 
ent interference and compulsion ; but by the 
gentle, imperceptible, yet powerful and contin- 
ual attraction of His divine human love, in in- 
finitely wise ways, He draws us from our idols 
unto Himself. Well might He say to Peter, 
" What I do thou knowest not now, but thou 
shalt know hereafter." The very good we 
loved, upon which we have set our hearts, which 
in our vain prudence we esteem the short road 
to happiness, is, in His infinite foresight, bad 
for us ; and He loves us too much to let us take, 
while He loves us too wisely to openly snatch it 
from us ! Hence the darkness of our discipline. 
He, turning us from the paths our unbridled 
self-love marks out, yet showing not His hand, 
that we may learn as if of ourselves, the vanity 
of our prudence and turn unto His precepts and 
walk in His ways. It can not be too deeply 
impressed that there is not even any earthly 



TEE NEW BIRTH. 105 

good granted for its own sake alone, but that 
the whole dispensation, whether of riches, or 
honor, or health, or sickness, or poverty, or dis- 
grace, has an inevitable connection with, and 
reference to, the spiritual and final state of the 
subject of it. This is never out of the 
view of divine love which will not give us 
less than the best, nor suffer us for all time to 
sell our birthright ; yet must not rob us of our ' 
sense of freedom, which would be to take away 
the capacity to enjoy the blessing in store. 
Therefore all are led through paths of mystery 
and ways unknown, till the blindness has clearly 
gone from their eyes, and the light of eternity 
shines over all the past, and covers it with glory. 
But "the peace of God that passes under- 
standing " does come to the man thus abiding in 
the Lord and seeking to be conformed to His 
words. The fruits of such a life are more than 
can be enumerated. Then a thousand delights 
of which the previous states know nothing, take 
up their abode in the mind ; the external life is 
held subordinate to the internal ; instead of care 
and discontent, a serene and joyful sense of life 



106 THE NEW BIRTR. 

flowing continually from the Lord ; instead 
murmuring, cheerfulness of spirit ; and with in- 
creasing recognition of the Lord and His provi- 
dence in all things, increasing facility in con- 
forming to His will ; and the lapse of time, fill- 
ing us with new delights as it bears us percepti- 
bly onward to the harmony and joys of heaven. 
"It is the mind which makes another and a 
v new man. Changes of state can not be per- 
ceived in the body of man, but in his spirit, 
and when it is put off, then his spirit appears, 
and is altogether another form when he is re- 
generated, for it has then the form of love and 
charity in beauty inexpressible." 



A CHAPTER ON MIND-CURE. 

A new significance has been given to the doc- 
trine of regeneration with many minds through 
the metaphysical theories of health and healing 
which have come into prominence. There are 
various schools of ''Christian Science "and of 
"Mind-Cure" affirming that all cause and effect 
are mental and not physical ; that matter is a 
manifestation of mind ; that evil and pain are 
manifestations of wrong beliefs, and that when 
the thought of the mind is brought into har- 
mony with truth, which is Divine mind, all evil 
and disease are overcome. These theories move 
in the direction of the "psychical wave" which 
is just now at its flood. It seems but yesterday 
that materialism carried all before it: "Only 
matter is real, thought is cerebration. The su- 
pernatural is imaginary. In the atom is the 
promise and potency of all life. Given the 
atom and motion, behold the universe." Now 
idealism, supernaturalism, have their day: 
" Matter is only a shadow 7 . Mind is all. Mind 

107 



108 THE NEW BIRTH. 

is God. God is good ; there is no evil except 
error. Mind abstracted from sense is out of 
time and space, in communion with all mind, 
and one with God. Disease and death are only 
sensuous appearances ; a right mind denies 
them, and so destroys them. 55 

Such reactions are natural We may find the 
dynamic principle of the pendulum thus illus- 
trated in the vibrations of popular thought all 
along the ages ; but there is another principle 
in the evolution of "the ages 55 themselves. 
There are epochs marked by the influx of new 
forces, giving new impulses to popular thought; 
and accompanied with revelation of new truths 
as the material of thought. Not only oscilla- 
tions of thought, but advance to new platforms 
and standpoints. A characteristic of our time 
is the vague consciousness of such a new be- 
ginning. Men call this a New Age, and the 
popular consciousness is alive with sense of 
change, with eager expectation of new develop- 
ments. We think we know what this means, 
which all feel and so few understand. It means 
that the Lord will have a New Church and a 



THE JSfEW BIRTH. 109 

new religion. The time is come and the forces 
are set in motion. They press upon all minds, 
upon all systems, upon all institutions, to un- 
settle and readjust and prepare them for the 
revelation that is to bring in a new day for 
mankind. The world feels the new impulse, 
and knows not what to do with it. There is 
much first to be done in the sheer insanity and 
excess of un°;uided effort to think. There are 
old ideas to be broken up, and slumbering inter- 
ests to be awakened. Above all, the need of 
divine revelation is to be demonstrated in the 
impossibility of doing anything without it. 

Here the New Church stands unmoved in the 
midst of all these fluctuations. She has divine 
revelation from the Lord ; and knows the mean- 
ing of the Apocalyptic New Heaven and Earth, 
and of the Lord's promise to "make all things 
new." She expects these movements before 
they occur. She knows the meaning of them 
before they mature. She can tell the outcome 
of them in general while yet they are begin- 
ning. This, from the guiding light of great 
principles, and the commanding standpoint of 



110 THE NEW BIRTH. 

divine ends. All real knowledge of higher 
things comes from without, and is an instruc- 
tion. Man can not think out these things for 
himself. Naturally he is averse to them, although 
he thinks he wants to know them ; and when 
not averse, his faculties of themselves can by 
no means reach them. No man can find out 
God, unless God reveals and manifests Himself. 
No man can discern the nature and conditions 
of the spiritual world, unless God takes means 
to display its secrets. Therefore, in all great 
onward movements of the race, He intercedes, 
He instructs ; gives knowledge by revelation 
beforehand. He has made such a revelation in 
advance of this New Age, for the guidance of 
its thought, and for the founding of a new 
faith and life. He has revealed the truth about 
his divine person, nature, and attributes in doc- 
trinal forms adequate to rational thought. The 
spiritual world in all needful things, as to its 
laws, conditions of life, and phenomena, He has 
made known. Heaven and hell are revealed. 
The relation of the natural to the spiritual uni- 
verse, and the relation of man to both, and to 



THE NEW BIRTH. Ill 

the Lord, is made known. All these things 
are matters of instruction, and must be taught 
or they can not be known.* They are taught 
in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. In the 
foregoing presentation of the doctrine of the 
New Birth they have been assumed ; in order to 
answer some of the questions growing out of 
current speculations concerning health and heal- 
ing, and mental phenomena in general, they 
may be set forth without argument in a series of 
propositions. 

THE DOCTRINE. 

1. That there are two worlds, the spiritual 
world in which are angels and spirits, and. the 
natural world in which are men. 

2. The spiritual world exists and subsists 
from its own sun, which is pure love from 
Jehovah God in the midst of it ; and the natu- 
ral world exists and subsists from its sun, which 
is pure fire, in itself dead but sustained by influx 
from the spiritual sun. 

3. The heat from the sun in the spiritual 
world is in its essence love, and the light from 

*Dr. Wilkinson's ''Greater Origins and Issues of Life and Doath," p. 
137. 



112 THE NEW BIRTH. 

that sun is in its essence wisdom ; and the heat 
and light from the sun of the natural world 
serve them for clothing that they may pass to 
man and nature. 

4. The heat and light from the sun of the 
spiritual world, and all things which exist and 
subsist from them, are substantial and are called 
spiritual : and the heat and light from the sun 
of the natural world, and all things which exist 
here by means of them, are material, and are 
called natural. 

5. The two worlds are, therefore, discrete 
and distinct, as cause and effect, and corre- 
spond. The spiritual world is within the 
natural world, not as one box is in another, or 
as ether is in a bottle, but as the soul is in the 
body, and as the efficient mental cause is in an 
outward material effect. 

6. The spiritual world flows into the natural 
world and animates and actuates it as the soul 
flows into the body, — not as becoming in any 
way a part of it, but as a distinct actuating 
form and force within it, in all and every part 
of it. 



• 



THE NEW BIRTH. 113 

7. Man, during his life in this world, is an 
inhabitant of both worlds, possessing organic 
mental forms, terminating in a spiritual body 
organized of spiritual substances, and with 
senses, corresponding part to part and function 
to function, with the organic physical body and 
its senses . 

8. The physical body has life and function by 
influx from the soul through the spiritual body. 

9. At death, the bond of correspondence be- 
ing broken and such influx ceasing, the physical 
body is cast aside, and man awakes to sensible 
cognizance of the spiritual world, in his spirit- 
ual body, perfect man in identity, function and 
form. 

10. During this life, he is as to his spirit pres- 
ent in the spiritual world, though not sensibly 
perceiving it ; and is in unconscious association 
with spirits who live permanently in that world. 

11. By means of such unconscious association 
with spirits, affections, thoughts, ideas, and im- 
pressions are awakened, formed, modified and 
multiplied in man, and unconsciously adopted as 

his own. 
8 



114 THE NEW BIRTH. 

12. The natural world, and the material body- 
as co-ordinate with it, is only that things 
spiritual may therein terminate, and is in itself 
dead, inert, reactive ; but it is for that reason 
the plane of creation, evolution, birth, growth, 
ultimate changes, and dissolution. 

THE DOCTRINE APPLIED. 

"If the spiritual world is the world of 
causes," it may be asked, " are not then physical 
disorder and disease relatively unreal ? " 

They are spiritual in their origin, but the 
effects correspond to the causes and represent 
them, until they are removed. Our human ills 
exist in us, from us, and by us. They do not 
flow in from without, but from the spirit and its 
associations in the spiritual world ; but the or- 
ganic and functional effects in the disordered 
forms of the spirit terminate by correspondence 
in the body and there become actual and fixed 
until removed by obedience to the laws which 
govern the regeneration and restoration of each 
and of both. 

"But if the first cause of all things is in God, 



THE NEW BIRTH. 115 

and He works through the spiritual world to 
produce all things, how can there be any evil or 
disorder in reality? Is it not an error of the 
perverted mind of man? If the mind insists 
that God is all, and evil and disease are only 
wrong beliefs, will it not come into harmony 
with God and into the liberty of the spirit ? " 

These questions arise from confounding what 
the foregoing doctrine keeps strictly distinct. 
God, spirit and matter are not to be con- 
founded : (a) God is life, substance and form in 
Himself; (h) spirit is created substance and 
form, receptive of life ; and (c) matter is created 
substance and form, in itself dead and reactive 
to life. In like manner God, man and nature 
are distinct : (a) God alone is, the creator of re- 
cipient forms and the giver of life ; (b) man is 
created a spiritual, substantial form, co-ordinate 
with the spiritual world, clothed upon with a 
dead, passive and reactive body co-ordinate with 
the material world ; (c) life from God flows 
immediately into man's organic will and under- 
standing, imparting and maintaining power to 
love and think and do, and also mediately 



116 THE NEW BIRTH. 

through the spiritual world according to the 
quality of his love and thought and deed ; thus 
(d) man lives by immediate influx from God, 
but by mediate influx through associate angels 
and spirits, and by the reaction of the natural 
world, he lives in freedom and rationality. 

This is the mere, dry skeleton of doctrine, 
but for those who are willing to think, it is 
capable of receiving the spirit of life. These 
distinctions can not be ignored without meta- 
physical confusion. Without them the problem 
of evil can not be solved. These distinctions 
being understood, it may be seen that there are 
two origins of all things. In the language of 
Dr. Wilkinson they are "God the Supreme 
Will, the Creator, and man the created or privi- 
leged free-will, the secondary creator. In a 
sense the one factor is co-extensiveness with the 
other, in that man has under him the manage- 
ment of his whole self, and also of the earth 
which he inhabits." "In this immeasurable 
vicegerency of man's free-will, seconded as it is 
by a power supplied from the Omnipotent, lies 
a motive force" which produces all modifica- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 117 

tions of good and truth, originates evil and 
falsity, registers them in the organic spirit, and 
"acts downward upon the body, carrying with 
it every day the conditions of health or of dis- 
ease." 

" Very well," it may be said, "if all disorder 
and disease originate in the evil use of man's 
free-will in opposition to the laws of spiritual 
life, is not the most effectual cure to be found 
in removing the cause bv bringing the mind 
and life into harmony with the divine truth and 
thus into order ? " 

Certainly this is the only radical remedy for 
human ills. If you could cancel the vices and 
evils, the wickedness of mankind, a new era in 
the health of the race would be at once inaugu- 
rated. To quote Dr. Wilkinson again, "Man's 
health is founded upon two gifts : (a) The first 
a human form, the image and likeness of God. 
Every sane man so far possesses it that he be- 
comes amenable to it and craves to maintain it 
in such integrity as he can. In him the sense of 
pleasure and pain is a personal guardian around 
his bodily nature, (i) Secondly, every sane 



118 THE NEW BIMTH. 

man has some conscience, some sense of right 
and wrong, which is a sense of spiritual and 
moral pleasure and pain from obedience or dis- 
obedience to the dictates of this conscience. It 
is impossible to be in health unless both these 
factors are in their right governance. A bad 
man may be in splendid bodily condition and 
his health be certified perfect at his insurance 
office, but unless he and his posterity repent 
and lead new lives, natural decay and disease 
will grow out of mental unhappiness and decay, 
and his progeny will stop and perish." Heredity 
carries this along with it, but it does not follow 
that the effects immediately manifest themselves 
in corresponding physical disorders. The per- 
version of the spiritual organism interiorly may 
come out in corresponding diseases in the third 
and fourth generation from the sinner. Nothing 
but real regeneration by obedience in life to 
the Word of God can permanently break the 
descent. 

"Is disease, then, the correspondent in the 
body of the disorders and sins of the sufferer ? " 

Of spiritual disorders to some extent always, 



THE NEW BIRTH. 119 

of errors, lusts and cravings, often ; but not of 
the individual's sins always. All that was said 
of hereditary transmission of disordered spirit- 
ual and physical organisms, is to be considered 
as determining many modifying causes of dis- 
ease. Evils coming out in the broken-down or- 
ganism of the spirit may not mar the bodily 
health and form ; or they may so register and 
fix themselves in the organic and functional dis- 
orders of the body, that the regenerating soul 
will carry throughout this life a "body of 
death" and torment. Nor because all causes 
are spiritual is it to be inferred that diseases are 
never occasioned by outward circumstances 
without avoidable spiritual causes in the victim 
of them. We are members one of another. 
The spiritual world with the spirits, good and 
evil, who have entered it, acts like a soul invis- 
ibly influencing the course of all things here. 
You can not love the same evil without having 
the infernal crew for intimate companions. You 
can not yield to fears, lusts and cravings, how- 
ever ignorantly, without laying open every cor- 
responding bodily organ to their influx; and 



120 THE NEW BIRTH. 

evils begun in ourselves travel the spiritual and 
natural lines of descent and association and ap- 
pear in physical shapes at a distance often from 
their spiritual source. From the pressure of the 
evil in the spiritual world, moreover, come all 
disorderly, noxious and poisonous forms in the 
natural world, and the injury, and poison and 
contagion of them originate in that world. In- 
troduced into the body, they become occasions 
of influx ; they do not themselves produce dis- 
ease, but invite their corresponding infernal 
crew, who produce the disorder through the ex- 
ternal of man's spirit on a level with the body. 
A true philosophy of causes does not therefore 
contradict the common-sense which is able to 
perceive that the most earnest, regenerating 
souls, are often tied to painfully diseased bodies ; 
and on the other hand, that the selfish and 
greedy oppressor of men will often preserve to 
himself marvelous physical endurance and 
health, and the sirenic lover of the most filthy 
evils may for a time mask in a form of physical 
perfection and beauty. 

u Think of all the people you know and of all 



TEE NEW BIRTH. 121 

they do ; all their ways of going on ; all the 
oddities and crotchets they must indulge ; all 
the care they take upon them ; all their tempers, 
indulgences, hatreds and lusts ;" — add to your 
thought the reading of Swedenborg's picture of 
the hells, to influx from which we are thus laid 
open, individually and through the social state ; 
add to your thought one day's reading of the 
newspapers as the exhibit of the moral miasma 
and filth rising up from the ignorant and vicious 
and pouring down from the high and mighty, 
remembering that u wherever a swamp and pu- 
tridity of circumstance lies" evil spirits are 
congenially attracted, and godly and godless 
folks are smitten if they dwell upon that region 
— and you will see what mighty and complicated 
factors of unhappmess, misfortune and disease 
you have to deal with. These things can not 
be dismissed with a denial ; nor can they be 
rendered as though they were not by the per- 
suasion that they are not. 

"Does it then signify nothing to us that 
Christ said 'whosoever committeth sin is the 
servant of sin,' and 'If ye continue in my 



122 THE NEW BIRTH. 

words ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
shall make you free ? ' " 

Yes, certainly ; that is the key to the whole 
solution in this world or the next. And so long 
as the problem is being worked out, it does not 
so much matter whether the sum is finished in 
this world or not. It is not merely alleviation 
that the wise man seeks, but eternal order for 
the perfect uses of eternal life ; and not the 
least hopeful sign in current thought is the 
awakening to a realization of an orderly life in 
obedience to the Word of God as the remedy 
for all human ills whatsoever. This is practical 
religion which alone can bring man into har- 
mony with the divine laws which are ordained 
for salvation and health in the constitution of 
mind and body, and in the providential govern- 
ment of society in both worlds. 

A true Christian faith will assert the cause of 
all disease as spiritual ; but it will not ignore its 
organic and functional effects in the disordered 
forms it induces in the spirit first, and thence by 
correspondence in the body. It will rightly re- 
fer the root and origin of all that afflicts man in 



TEE NEW BIRTH. 123 

mind, body or estate, to man's evil will and way; 
but it will not ignore its actual reality and in- 
fernal contagion until arrested and removed by 
repentance and regeneration, involving man's 
final judgment and promotion to his own place 
and perfect environment in a spiritual world 
made and governed to that end. It will rightly 
assert the omnipotence of the Kedeemer over all 
manner of sin and sickness ; but it will not 
ignore the laws of divine Providence by which 
the Great Physician ever works through man's 
free will and cooperation, and this by organic 
processes and for eternal ends. 

The one legitimate end and effort for man is 
to come into divine order, by an observance of all 
revealed laws, spiritual and natural. The possi- 
bility and the obligations of such a life of order 
are greatly increased by the revelations of the 
laws of Divine Providence made for the man of 
the Church at this day. The Divine Providence is 
the government of the Lord's divine love and 
wisdom. It has its laws in the divine nature 
and the nature of all that proceeds from Him in 
both worlds. It is not the government of whim; 



124 THE NEW BIBTH. 

but of divine ends moving through mediate 
causes to eternal effects. Fundamental among 
the laws hitherto unknown are these : (1) That 
man should be led in freedom according to 
reason. (2) That man should, as of himself, re- 
move evils as sins in the external thought and 
life ; and thus and not otherwise the Lord can 
remove the lusts of evil from within, and gift 
man with the happy things of eternal life. 
(3) That the Lord acts from His Divine life in 
inmosts, and from His divine truth in the ex^ 
ternal and outmost things of man's life, simul- 
taneously, to heal, order, and regenerate all 
things into the image and likeness of the Di- 
vine, and thus into the order and health of the 
eternal life. (4) That evils are permitted and 
overruled for the sake of the end which is salva- 
tion. (5) That the outward vicissitudes of life 
are most particularly under laws of Providence 
and permission to the end that man may see his 
evils, and by shunning them, be withdrawn 
from them. (6) That so far, therefore, as any 
one can be led to look to the Lord and shun 
evils as sins against Him, and live as the Word 



THE NEW BIRTH. 125 

teaches, he is, by orderly and secret means, con- 
joined with heaven, protected from the sphere 
and dominion of evil spirits, healed of his infirmi- 
ties, disorders and diseases, and perfected for 
his own place in eternal life. (7) That since the 
Lord is order itself, all things from first to last 
are reformed and regenerated with respect to all 
other things, for the sake of eternal life in 
heaven, and not at all for temporal peace and 
quiet except as instrumental thereto. 

It may be seen, therefore, how greatly they 
err who place their whole concern in ends of 
bodily health, or seek to secure it by persuading 
themselves that evils and obstructions do not 
exist, or expect to think themselves into divine 
order by ignoring the pains of conscience and 
the pains of sense, which are only after all the 
Lord's sentinels that warn us of evils to be seen, 
acknowledged, and actually put away by in- 
terior repentance and external obedience to the 
laws of life, spiritual and natural. That is a 
true Christian science, however, which demands 
that we should live the principles of true re- 
ligion as revealed in the Word of God, trusting 



126 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



the Lord as our Heavenly Father, who will lead 
us and teach us, and as an Almighty Redeemer 
who, if we "continue in His Word," will deliver 
us by His truth. When man will thus look to 
the Lord and do what He teaches, living in the 
reality and power of spiritual things, concerned 
only that evils should be brought to light that 
they may be repented of and put away, trusting 
the Lord to overrule all things for good to 
them that love Him, then all things will work 
together to bring his life into order, one thing 
with another, and all together with a view to the 
harmonious whole in heaven, which is the divine 
end in the making of us. The more simply and 
trustfully any one is in this life, the more he 
will regard disease as a disorder and a manifest- 
ation of evils, and the more he will rise above 
it, not by denying it, bu't by seeking only to 
know and do the Lord's will, and to come into 
obedience to the laws of spiritual and bodily 
health, and the more he will enjoy inward tran- 
quillity and peace. They are right, therefore, 
who assert the supremacy of the spiritual life ; 
for so far as we come into that orderly life of 



THE NEW BIRTH. 127 

the spirit, which is regeneration, we are pro- 
tected from the sphere of evil spirits, brought 
within the sphere of angelic association, and 
into the stream of that divine influx and opera- 
tion which works all things for eternal ends. 
This spiritual state lifts from the body at once 
the chief cause of its ills, and makes way for 
happy usefulness day by day in the circum- 
stances which are the best possible preparation 
for our entrance into the soul's own world in its 
own body ; a body which is fashioned in the 
image of the soul's ruling love, and is free in a 
world where to think is to see, where to wish is 
to have, where to will and purpose is to be and 
do. u To him that overcometh will I give to 
eat of the tree of life which is in the midst 
of the paradise of God"! 



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